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The Faith By Which 
We Live 



A PLAIN, PRACTICAL EXPO- 
SITION OF THE RELIGION 
OF THE INCARNATE LORD 



By the Right Reverend 

CHARLES FISKE. D.D., LL.D. 

Bishop Coadjutor of Central New York 

Author of "The Experiment of Faith", "Back to Christ", 
"Sacrifice and Service", etc. 



Morehouse Publishing Co. 

Milwaukee, Wis. 




COPYRIGHT BY THE 
MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 
1919 



13 lyfg 



TO THE MEMORY 



OF 

CHARLES ANDREWS 

a courteous Cenllemant a great Citfzen, a distinguished Jurist, a 
faithful Churchman, a devout, sincere, and consistent Christian 

I DEDICATE 

this volume, because his urgent suggestion {in a request made a fei» 
months before his death) led to its publication. Ma}f it train 
others in the Faith, teach them to love the Church, and 
help them to live the Truth, that so they may adorn 
the doctrine of Cod our Saviour in all things.. 



PREFACE 



vii 



PREFACE 

THIS practical little book aims to present in pop- 
ular form, free from technicalities, some of the 
great foundation truths of Christianity as they are 
related to life. It is a thorough revision and rear- 
rangement, with some additions, of a work which I 
published some years ago under the title. The Religion 
of the Incarnation. The revision and rewriting have 
made it practically a new book and I have given it, 
therefore, a new name. In its earlier form the book 
has been out of print for several years. I have de- 
layed reissuing it, first, because of doubts as to the real 
need of another edition, and second, because I was not 
content to have it reprinted without the revision it 
has now had. 

Eepeated requests for its publication have con- 
vinced me that it still has real usefulness. There 
seems to be no other book which quite takes its place. 
When the clergy of Porto Kico tried to find a popular 
manual for translation into Spanish for use in Latin 
America, they could discover nothing which better 
met their need and it has lately been translated and 
published and given a wider circulation as printed in 
monthly installments in El Nuevo Siglo, 



viii 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



While the revision has made it a new book, I have 
been surprised, nevertheless, to discover how little it 
needed change in substance rather than form. The 
old truths of our religion are ever new. New facts 
but show the vital power of the old faith. The 
terrible years of war through which the world has 
passed would have driven one mad, were it not that 
we had that faith to live by. A gospel that tells of a 
God who entered into the tragedy of human life and 
understands and sympathizes has been the only gospel 
for years of trial and dark struggle. I wonder if 
others of the clergy have been discovering, as I have, 
not that they cannot preach the old faith, but that 
they can preach nothing else. The things we used to 
say have not lost their value; they have gained new 
force. With but the change of a sentence or two in 
their practical application, they bring new messages 
for men and women of a new age. 

I wonder, too, whether others have felt, almost 
as a new revelation, the deep significance and prac- 
tical power of the faith we have been preaching — ^but 
possibly, until now, preaching somewhat academi- 
cally. In a remarkable charge to his clergy, deliv- 
ered during some of the darkest days of the war, the 
Bishop of Oxford showed how the dominant ideas 
which have been laying hold of men — ^the idea of 
liberty for all and of the equal spiritual worth of 
every individual; the conception of brotherhood and 
of sacrificial service; the larger ideal of the fellow- 
ship of the nations in a world-wide human commu- 



^ Gore : Dominant Ideas and Corrective Principles, 



PREFACE 



is 



nity — are really Christian ideas and are necessarily 
involved in any honest interpretation of the Gospel. 
In its great task of self-reformation and world- 
redemption, the Bishop summons the Christian com- 
munity to return with the old enthusiasm, to the old 
religion of the Creed, the Bible, the Church, and the 
Sacraments, but to interpret these in terms of what 
is interesting everyone who has a heart to feel and a 
brain to think and so ^^to make men feel afresh that 
Jesus Christ is the true prophet of liberty, brother- 
hood, and catholicity^^ 

The purpose of this book is much simpler and 
more elementary; but in its humbler way it points 
out the same lesson — not so much by way of showing 
the religious and moral changes which the great 
world catastrophe has brought about and the Chris- 
tian answer to the problems it presents (this has 
been done by others in the years when we were in 
the thick of the conflict), as by stating what the 
Gospel revelation and the Gospel scheme of redemp- 
tion really are and the grounds on which we accept 
both — and stating this in the every-day language of 
every-day people. 

I do not like to call this a manual of instruction. 
It is that, but I hope it is more. It is a plain, 
practical, common-sense exposition of the Christian 
faith, written in language that the average, every-day 
man can understand ; but it is not — or I hope it is not 
— ^just a summary and explanation of a series of dry 
doctrines. It is both creed and conduct, belief and 
practice, dogma and devotion — a statement of faith, 



X THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 

but the statement of a faith by which men live. The 
doctrines of Christianity are but the logical exponents 
of its facts. We accept them, not as mere items of 
information, but as interpretations of those facts 
which are the springs and sources of the Christian 
life — that life to which we would re-dedicate ourselves 
in these days of splendid service. 

Syracuse, Xew York. C. F. 



CONTENTS xi 



CONTENTS 

I. — Cbeed and Conduct 1 

II. — Why I Believe in God 15 

III. — The Holy Trinity 25 

IV. — The Divinity of Jesus Christ - - - - 33 
V. — The Incarnation of Our Lord - - - - 40 

VI. — The Incarnation and God's Love - - - 49 

VII. — The Incarnation and God's Personality 56 

VIII. — ^The Incarnation and God's Presence - 62 

IX. — Sin and the Fall 68 

X. — The Atonement 77 

XI. — The Holy Spirit, the Life-Giver - - - 86 

XII. — The Practice of Prayer 94 

XIII. — Christ and His Church 108 

XIV. — Choosing a Church 123 

XV. — The Extension of the Incarnation - - 137 

XVI. — The Incarnation Applied 147 

XVII.— The Baptismal Gift 156 

XVIII. — Infant Baptism 166 

XIX. — The Eucharistic Sacrifice 175 

XX. — The Holy Communion 185 

XXI. — The Eucharistic Presence 192 

XXII. — Preparation for Holy Communion - - 200 

XXIII. — Confession and Absolution 209 



ill THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 

XXTV. — The Chbistian Priesthood 220 

XXV. — The Apostolic Succession 230 

XX\^. — CONFIEMATION A>T) OtHEB SaCBAMENTS - 243 

XXVII. — The Bible a^d Its Inspibatiox - - - 249 

XXVIIL— Some Bible Peoblems 258 

XXIX. — The Ceetaixty of a Ftjtuee Life - - - 266 

XXX. — The Pboof of the Resueeection - - - 272 

XXXI.— The Faithful Depabted 281 

XXXIL— The I>'teemediate State 292 

XXXIII. — Heaven and Hell 301 

XXXIV. — The Angelic World 313 



CREED AND CONDUCT 



The Faith By Which We Live 



I. 

CREED AND CONDUCT 

HOSE who have been engaged in religions work 



1 in the home camps or abroad, during the years 
of the Great War now happily ended, have had un- 
usual opportunities to judge of the religious life of 
America and of the general effectiveness of our Church 
work. The tale they bring has not been altogether 
encouraging. 

The vast majority of the millions of Americans 
enrolled as soldiers and sailors professed some relig- 
ion. This profession was usually definite enough to 
include preference for some particular religious body, 
if not the claim of adherence to it. But of those who 
stated that they were identified with some Christian 
denomination large numbers admitted, in response to 
questions, that they rarely if ever go to church. 
Attendance at public worship is at best infrequent, 
irregular, and spasmodic, often confined to a service 
now and then on some special occasion for a sermon 
to the lodge, or something of a similar sort. While 




2 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the mass of men are listed as giving some religious 
preference^ an appallingly large per cent, of them re- 
port that they are not baptized. They do not know the 
reasons for baptism and apparently have never heard 
any explanation of its meaning or necessity. This is 
particularly true of one of the great middle western 
camps where a faithful canvass was made by the chap- 
lains. In most cases investigation was not carried so 
far, but there are indications that the facts are about 
the same everywhere. Young fellows who have sung 
in choirs, some who as boys have been members of 
vested choirs for several years, have never seen a 
baptism nor heard a word about that sacrament either 
in sermon or instruction. 

As to the men who state that they are Church 
members fully fifty per cent, of those questioned ad- 
mit that they have not received Communion in years ; 
some have never received. They do not know how the 
Holy Communion is administered or the reasons for 
its celebration. 

Among all the men there is found a pathetic 
ignorance of the Bible and of the simplest facts of 
Christianity. Though brought up in so-called Bible 
churches, whose chief boast is that they teach the 
Word, large numbers of men have no knowledge of 
Scripture beyond a vague remembrance of a few 
scattered texts, some of the verses of the shepherd 
psalm, an Old Testament story like that of David and 
Goliath, one or two of the parables, perhaps an inci- 
dent in the life of Christ. Few of them have any 
clear idea of our Lord's life as a whole. They know 



CREED AND CONDUCT 



3 



something of the Christinas story and (less clearly) 
the story of Good Friday — ^that is all. No one has 
ever taught them (at least not in such a way as to fix 
it in their memory) who Christ was^ when He was 
born, where He lived, what He did, why He was put 
to death, how He rose. Certainly they do not know 
the tremendous claims He made or the traditional in- 
terpretation of the meaning of His life. They do not 
really understand the simplest statements of Christian 
belief. The creeds are a sealed book. Often (so it 
would seem) they have heard little of creeds, though 
they have a rather definite prejudice against dogmas 
or doctrines — ^^a plain man has no use for them^^ they 
declare. 

Finally, they do not pray. Pressed for reasons, 
they say that it does no good or that nobody ever 
taught them how. At any rate, many of them when 
questioned admit that they do not say their prayers, 
either on their knees or after they have tumbled into 
bed, unless we except an occasional recital of the 
Lord^s prayer or some childish rhyming petition. 

This is not, of course, a criticism of the soldier. 
Assuredly not. The men whose religious convictions 
and practices we have had an opportunity of observing 
are a cross section of American society, representing 
every class and type of American life. What they 
are is what America is — if it is as good. What they 
believe and do is about what the mass of the American 
people believe and do. What they are ignorant of we 
may fairly suppose are the things of which American 
men generally, in about the same proportion, are 



4 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



ignorant or to which they are indifferent. Of course 
there are numbers of active Church members and 
equally of course many of these are well-instructed 
and consistent in the practice of their religion, but 
the number of men who are not is a serious indictment 
of American Christianity and to most people an unex- 
pected revelation of the inefficiency of American 
church organizations. 

I repeat that this is not a criticism of the soldier. 
Some of us who have taken the trouble to investigate 
know what religious conditions are in rural America 
and in villages and small towns — conditions that led 
the lat-e President Hyde to select as the title of a study 
of rural conditions ^'Impending Paganism in Xew 
England.*^* I talk with all sorts of people as I travel 
about the country and I know that even the most 
startling figures of the weakness of Christianity in the 
small towns do not tell half the story. If we could 
get as thorough a survey of city life we should not 
find it much better.^ 

Xor must it be supposed that this plain statement 
of facts is an attack upon the soldiers morals. Grave 
moral problems were revealed by the draft, it is true, 
but never have these problems been faced as frankly 
and fearlessly as now and never has there been so 
thorough a campaign of education or so effective a 
programme of protection. Young men in France and 
in camp here were safer than young men at home. 

The tremendously encouraging thing to which all 



^ See my Sacrifice and Service, pages 3-6. 



CREED AND CONDUCT 



5 



Christian warworkers testify is that our men have 
shown a fine, sturdy moral earnestness and conviction. 
With all their ignorance they are really religious at 
heart. Were it not for the reticence and reserve 
which is characteristic of most men when religion is 
discussed, we should probably learn even more for our 
encouragement, but there are indications in plenty 
that the soul of the soldier is sound. An overseas test 
made repeatedly among soldiers everywhere, from the 
landing ports to the trenches, showed that an over- 
whelming majority of the men have very clear ideas 
as to what they consider to be cardinal virtues and 
contemptible sins. Courage, unselfishness, generosity, 
and modesty or humility make up their code of 
morals. All these are %ed rock" virtues. A well- 
known American evangelist, Mr. Fred B. Smith, who 
has had unusual opportunities for observing the men 
and talking with them frankly, declares that the more 
one studies the set of standards which the young men 
put before them the more one is amazed at the un- 
erring way in which they have picked out the great 
essentials of character. "I do not claim," he says, 
^^that all men have these standards. The draft was 
a great net which drew together millions of men of 
all classes, all degrees of education. They are not 
angels! Some of them are far from it. But the 
code here given does express the prevailing sentiment 
of the mass of the men." 

My own experience, once more, has taught me to 
be an optimist about the average man everywhere. 
He has very simple ideas of religion but he always 



6 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



gets down to essentials. To him religion means un- 
selfishness^ generosity, sincerity, cleanliness of soul, a 
genuineness and straightforward honesty that despises 
cant and therefore is chary of religious professions, 
an abiding faith in goodness, a very real humility be- 
cause of his own defects (or, as we should say, sins) 
and a readiness, for that reason, to forgive defects or 
sins in others. He has only a vague consciousness of 
God and yet somehow, whether he prays or not, we 
feel that he is conscious of Him — as the child is con- 
scious of the mother in another part of the house and 
would miss her if he knew she had gone away.^ 

All this gives us courage, but it is the courage of 
brave endeavor to make the most of the essential 
virtues, not the audacity which leads us to deny 
unpleasant facts. Camp and field and hospital have 
given wonderful testimony to the splendid possibili- 
ties of humanity. Only, as Hankey reminds us, men 
fail to connect these things with Jesus Christ, much 
less do they connect them with His Church. They 
do not see that the virtues they admire come to frui- 
tion in Christian soil. The pity of it is that, because 
men have not really known Christianity, we have been 
missing all this fine service and men have failed to 
develop their latent possibilities. What splendid 
things we might have done, with such material to 
work on ! 

The fundamental moral ideas are instinctive. 
Under the generous impulse of service and sacrifice 



* See The Experiment of Faith, chapter iii. 



CREED AND CONDUCT 



7 



in stirring times they are manifested in a splendid 
way. But — they are so easily forgotten. Men's 
morals fall so quickly when the props and supports 
are gone. At the high call they rise to splendid 
heights, but in humdrum days ideals are dulled all too 
soon. The man who has the courage of the crisis 
often fails in the courage of the commonplace and the 
moral instincts are less clear when it is only ordinary 
duty that calls them out. 

Once more: Even if the heart of America is 
right, as we really believe it is, it is right in spite of 
our religious incompetence. There is still a lot of 
^^diffused Christianity^' in the world. Men are living 
by the impulses and motives of a former faith. Ideals 
of religious and god-fearing ancestors are not rooted 
up in a generation. Many a man who gives no time 
to prayer or public worship and little thought to 
religion and morals has an instinctive "faith of in- 
heritance''. 

But what about the next generation? We were 
drifting far and fast, here in America, were we not? 
We had got a long way off from the old moral moor- 
ings. Our spiritual consciousness was sadly dulled, 
our religious instincts sadly weakened, our moral 
restraints sadly relaxed, our standards sadly lowered. 
Fortunately for us, the war came before it was too late 
— war which stripped us of some of our creature com- 
forts and made the things of the spirit loom larger, 
war which summoned us to fight for an ideal, war 
against enemies who had made sin so hideously ugly 
that it has to some extent shamed it out of our own 



8 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



hearts. We were preserved from utter surrender to 
love of luxury, selfish ease, materialism, moral in- 
difference, money-madness. And we have discovered 
that at the core American life is still sound. It is not 
too late to save us. 

An oflBcer overseas puts it clearly 'in a letter sent 
to me recently: ^^N"ow that the brutality, bestiality, 
and crimes against women have shown me here in 
devastated France how horrible sin can become, I 
have asked myself often why I am as decent a man 
as I am, for I frankly acknowledge that I have not 
been very keen on religion. I have come to the con- 
clusion that most of my goodness is inherited good- 
ness. I have made up my mind that if I get back I 
shall do more to pass on to my children what I got 
from devout, religious parents. I shall try to create 
in my home more of the Christian atmosphere in 
which I was brought up. I don^t want my boy to 
start handicapped.^^ 

I honestly believe that only in Jesus Christ shall 
we find sure salvation. I want to make men under- 
stand that all the ideals of goodness they ever had are 
found in Christ — and found there to perfection. I 
want them to recognize their unacknowledged debt to 
Christ. I want them to see, also, that everj^thing 
Christ was God is. I want them to have moral 
strength and permanence and I believe that in Him 
is the only source of moral power which is sure and 
unfailing. I do not believe that Christian morals will 
last long apart from Christian faith and I think, 



CREED AND CONDUCT 



9 



therefore, that it is important for the churches to in- 
augurate a campaign of instruction — ^not merely a 
preaching crusade or mission but a campaign of care- 
ful, regular, systematic, practical instruction. We 
must have ^^a reason for the hope that is in us^\ 
Unless our moral life is deep rooted, it will soon 
wither. 

Men, whether in camp or at home, are wonderfully 
responsive to straight, definite Christian teaching. 
They are sick unto death of the second and third rate 
lecturettes on ethics which we have substituted for 
Christian preaching. They are weary beyond ex- 
pression of pulpit appeals to patriotism, denunciations 
of ^^booze'^ and attacks upon evils everybody recog- 
nizes and nobody fears to condemn. (They want 
religion linked up to life, but if evils are to be as- 
sailed there are crying social and economic evils 
which it takes courage to mention!) They want 
something strong and definite, instead of the weak, 
watery, colorless stream of platitudinous moralizing 
with which they have been deluged from Sunday 
school days on. Their happy-go-lucky acquiescence 
in an indefinite religion is not their fault. Says one 
chaplain,' whose opportunities for observation have 
been unusually wide : 

"With most of the men, one meets not merely 
with no resentment but with a positive interest in 
religion from the beginning. Vital Christianity Tiits 
them where they live'. Simple, virile preaching of 



» The Rev. Bernard Iddings Bell. 



10 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



God, of His importance, His reality, His friendsHp, 
His power, His sternness. His love, of the need for 
repentance, of the need for that help which is some- 
times, but not in the camp, called ^grace', of the grim 
viciousness of that animal selfishness which is called 
^sin^, of the strength and manliness of the God-Man 
Jesus Christ, of the heroism of Calvary, of the possi- 
bility of our becoming, with His help, like Him, real 
men and not mere T^easts that walk on our hind legs^ 
of the Church as the blessed company of His friends, 
of the sacraments as human touches from a present 
Lord — they love it ! I have heard them applaud and 
cheer it. I have seen them pour out after sermons 
and thank the preacher for it — not the sentimental 
goody-goodys, but big, strong, husky fellows with 
grips of steel/^ 

This book has been written to supply the need of 
instruction. It gives practical if solid teaching, on 
which more popular courses of instruction may be 
based. 

What is written here is grounded in the assump- 
tion that what a man believes is as important as what 
he does, just because as a rule what he does will de- 
pend on what he believes. One cannot divorce creed 
and character. The Christian character is really the 
outcome of the Christian creed. If we surrender the 
creed, with its insistence upon the facts of our Lord's 
life, in time we shall lose the character which sprang 
out of it. J^'ever again will it be possible to say, with 
casual and careless finalit}^, that it makes no difference 



CREED AND CONDUCT 



t! 



what a man believes. Prussianism has stamped the 
lie forever on that plausible untruth. 

After all, what are dogmas? It is always well to 
define terms: what, then, are Christian dogmas? 
Simply the logical statement of Christian facts. 
Many of those who object to doctrinal teaching are 
sincere believers in Jesus Christ. Let us start there. 
Who was He? What was He? Where are we to 
learn about Him? How does He bring us the life 
eternal ? How are we to keep it ? How does He save 
us and how and where are we to receive the benefit of 
the work He has done for us ? These and a hundred 
other questions spring up at once and Christian dog- 
mas are nothing more nor less than the answers to 
such questions. It is quite evident that the im- 
portant thing is to follow Christ, even though we can- 
not adequately define Him, but the kind of obedience 
we render and the faithfulness of our following in 
His steps will depend on our answers to questions 
like these. One who is alive to the meaning of 
Christ's life for his own soul will not rest satisfied 
until he has learned all that can be known about the 
Master — what were His relations to the Father whom 
He came to reveal, on what His authority rests, 
whether or not He is an infallible guide, why He may 
demand our allegiance and our love. 

If we were to teach doctrine as a mere shibboleth, 
excluding all who cannot frame to pronounce some 
test word aright, men could not condemn us too 
strongly. Dogma divorced from life would be useless 
— worse than useless. But if the doctrines of Chris- 



12 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



tianity are simply the logical expression of its facts, 
we cannot be rid of creeds even if we would. 

Every doctrine of the creed has its influence on 
conduct. Our whole thought of the purpose of life 
depends on our grasp of these spiritual realities. The 
conception of God as a moral governor is that which 
gives us a moral standard of action. The concep- 
tion of a Future Life gives us support in all our per- 
plexities ; by it we are led to believe that we see only 
a fragment of a vast scheme and that injustice and 
oppression, pain and sorrow, will be remedied in the 
world that is to come. The conception of the Incar- 
nation teaches us to recognize a new and ineffaceable 
relation between man and man; if Christ took upon 
Him our human nature every man, white or black, 
good or bad, saint or sinner, has in him some likeness 
to Christ and must not be neglected or despised. 
The conception of the Trinity tells us that subordi- 
nation is consistent with equality and that it is the 
glory of the Triune God to be one a moral living 
for and in each other, in a mutual devotion such as 
serves as an example for men.^^* The conception of 
the Atonement declares to us the conquest of evil 
through suffering, tells us of a Christ crucified 
through weakness but living through the power of 
God, and shows us the glory of self-sacrifice, the moral 
beauty of a life given for others. What message has 
equalled that message during the long years of agony 
through which the world has passed? The concep- 



* Mason: The Faith of the Gospel, 



CREED AND CONDUCT 



13 



tion of the Eesurrection makes every part of life im- 
portant; teaching, as it does, the resurrection of the 
flesh, it impresses on us the sacredness of our bodies 
as well as of our souls. 

So patient investigation will show that no doctrine 
— if it be rightly maintained — is without a bearing 
on conduct. False and imperfect doctrines will and 
must result in lives faulty and maimed which might 
have been noble and complete. The full Christian 
doctrine produces a full moral life. If it be trans- 
lated into action it is an inexhaustible spring of 
strength. Dogma is necessary because dogma rightly 
applied is life. The man who believes in God must 
put his life down upon his faith. ^The thing for 
which the Christian exists is to make it easier for 
others to believe in God. He exists in order to verify 
God to his kindred, his neighbors, and to all mankind, 
to make God^s goodness and wisdom manifest, through 
his life, to his fellow men.'' 

Indeed it is not the preaching of dogma to which 
men object, it is the exaggerated dogmatic spirit. 
There is a wide difference between dogma and dog- 
matism — the one broad, sane, reasonable, insisted on 
as the only safe foundation of helpful, warm-hearted 
service; the other narrow and sectarian, often dis- 
torting the truth by unduly emphasizing some one 
principle of the faith at the expense of much else that 
is equally true and important. It is dogmatism that 
arouses opposition and dislike — ^that fashion of 
presenting doctrine with sledge-hammer blows, or 
cranmiing it down men's throats, or insisting upon it 



14 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



for its own sake with, little or no effort to prove its 
necessity or its usefulness. 

This book then is more than a manual of instruc- 
tion. It is an effort to state Christian truth in a 
practical and reasonable way. Above everything else, 
it means always to show, either explicitly or im- 
plicitly, that in the full acceptance of Christian truth 
lie the richest possibilities of life. 



WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD 



15 



II. 

WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD 

THEEE is no clear, clean-cut proof of the existence 
of God. There is, of course, probable proof, 
moral certainty, but there is no demonstrative proof. 
Belief in God is a matter of faith, not of intellectual 
assurance. On the whole, however, most of us are 
sure of God. Men are naturally predisposed to belief 
in Him. Instinctively they trust conscience and 
listen to the voice of the heart. One of the strongest 
arguments for the existence of God is this instinctive 
belief of the race that He does exist — we call it the 
argumentum consensus gentium when we wish to ap- 
pear learned. But this book is for plain, practical 
people who do not care whether we are scholars or 
not, so long as we talk common sense. To most men 
it is unthinkable that there is no God and the fact 
that they all think alike about it is a strong argument, 
whether they know what name to give it or not. 

Probably the biggest argument against God^s ex- 
istence as a supreme moral governor over a universe 
He has made is the presence of evil in the world. We 
cannot understand why, if there is a God, He did not 



16 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



make the world good and keep it good; or, if that 
were impossible, why He permits evil to go so long 
unpunished. How many times, during the Great 
War, that question went up from men^s hearts in 
passionate protest against evil! 

Yet the very thing within me which demands 
God^s intervention and asks that He scourge evil from 
the earth is proof of the God whose existence and 
whose goodness I am tempted to doubt. Whence 
came that mysterious voice of conscience? Where do 
I get my standards of right and wrong? Does not 
the moral law, as of necessity, demand a Moral Law 
Giver? I know, too, that there is an unchangeable 
law of happiness, a real connection between joy and 
goodness, between moral misery and sin. How comes 
it that I cannot be content when I know that I am 
disregarding the inner voice ? Conscience itself cries 
out that there is a God. 

The real strength of the argument for God^s ex- 
istence — ^the thing which makes us call it moral proof, 
even if it be not demonstrated certainty — is that it is 
a converging argument. So many roads all lead to 
the same place ; so many signs all point the same way. 
Suppose we take some of these converging proofs, one 
by one, in a plain, practical, common-sense way. 

An incident is related of an eminent astronomer 
which shows how men, in the name of reason, are 
guilty often of the most irrational conduct. The 
great scientist had a friend who strenuously denied 
the existence and power of God. The astronomer had 



WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD 



17 



with much care constructed a concave in miniature, 
upon which he represented all the planets and stars 
in their places, together with their evolutions and 
courses. One day this friend came to see him, and 
noticing the ingenious piece of work, asked, "Who 
made that r 

"Who made it repeated the astronomer. "Why, 
nobody ; it came by chance.^^ 

"Jfonsense said his friend. "Keally, who made 

itr 

"Nobody,^^ came the reply again. "It came by 
chance, I tell you.^^ 

"Don^t be absurd,^^ was now the response, in irri- 
tation. "Someone must have made it. Why don't 
you tell me who it was?'^ 

Then the astronomer, turning to his friend, said : 
"This poor miniature which I have made to represent 
what God has created in the universe you say cannot 
have arisen from an irresponsible cause ; and yet you 
tell me that the wonderful and mighty works around 
and above us are a mere fortuitous combination of 
atoms. How do you explain your inconsistency?'^ 

The anecdote will illustrate one of the arguments 
that convince us of the existence of a supreme Cre- 
ator and Ruler of the universe. Every effect must 
have had an adequate cause, and every design must 
have had a designer. Were I to find a watch, wonder- 
fully calculated to fulfil the evident purpose of its 
manufacture, it would be absurd for me to suppose, 
just because I could not see the maker of it, that it 
came into existence by a mere chance, that somehow 



18 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the various parts accidentally fell together and fitted 
into each other with perfect correspondence and by a 
fortunate coincidence were able to mark the passage 
of time. Seeing the watch, noticing the evident de- 
sign in its various parts and observing the precision 
with which the mechanism does the thing it was 
manifestly intended to do, I cannot but say : Surely 
this thing had a maker. It is not by a lucky chance 
that the parts have come together and can do what I 
see them doing; someone designed it to do this; some- 
one made it so that it would accomplish that for 
which it was designed. In other words, when I see a 
watch I know that there must have been a watch- 
maker. 

iSTow, in something the same way, when I look at 
the world about me, when I see its manifold harmony 
of design, when I realize how perfectly it fulfils that 
design, I say again: This also must have had a 
Maker; some One must have brought it into being; 
some One must be responsible for all its wonderful 
perfection of movement, its correspondence of part 
with part, its harmony of action with action. 

If I am impelled to this belief when I think of 
the universe as a whole, much more am I forced to it 
when I examine in detail some one of its myriads of 
marvels. Take, for example, the human eye. Could 
anything be more exactly fitted to fulfil the function 
of sight ? Think for a moment of the retina, which 
receives the impressions from without. It is made up 
of numerous tissues, forming a sort of mosaic, one 
square inch of which receives twenty million impres- 



WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD 



19 



sions, while sixty million millions of light vibrations 
enter into it every second of time. Each ray must 
act upon but one part of the retina ; for unless there 
were some such special arrangement there would be 
no image formed, any more than the light entering 
through an open window forms a picture. Think, 
again, of the functions of the cornea, or of the 
aqueous and vitreous humors, or notice the external 
parts of the organ: the eyebrows are sponges which 
catch the moisture and dust from the forehead; the 
eyelids are a protection against hostile matter; the 
lashes are fans, to keep away dirt and insects. And 
where was the eye made ? when ? how ? It was formed 
in the maternal womb, long before it could be put 
to use, wholly separated by solid barriers from the 
external world. Without those walls was light ; with- 
in was forming an organ to perceive the light. It is 
as if in a dark cellar a blind workman should fashion 
a key to a complicated lock outside. Now consider 
that the eye is but one of a million wonderful things 
that go to make up this wonderful world, and you 
will see why we are compelled to believe that the 
universe did not come by chance: it was designed 
and created, and its Creator must be an intelligent 
Being, of infinite wisdom and power. 

Nor must it be supposed that such scientific 
theories as, for instance, the Darwinian theory of 
evolution would invalidate this argument. For Dar- 
winism is merely an explanation of how things be- 
came what they are, not necessarily a denial that 
there is a God who gave them their origin and made 



20 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



them capable of progressing from a simple beginning 
into a richer, fuller harmony and growth. 

The word evolution means an ^^nnfolding'^ and 
the evolutionary theory tells how different forms of 
animal and vegetable life have come from other 
forms already in existence. We are not told, however, 
anything about the ©riginal germ of matter from 
which these various forms have been evolved. There 
must have been some bit of protoplasm to begin with 
and it must have been endued with life or it could 
not have developed into all its succeeding forms. 
How, then, did that speck of protoplasm come into 
being ? Whence came the life energy which has since 
been displayed in the things that have come from it ? 
If God created the original germ and gave it the 
spark of life. He is the Creator of everything that 
has sprung out of it, no matter how the process of de- 
velopment was carried on, or what forces have affected 
succeeding forms of life that are traced back to this 
original. 

Evolutionists themselves will grant this. Herbert 
Spencer, for example, says that we know nothing of 
the beginning of the universe and that "the produc- 
tion of matter out of nothing is the real mystery.^^ ^ 

Darwin, too, has placed on record in his Life and 
Letters his belief that "the theory of evolution is quite 
compatible with the belief in a God.^^ Asa Gray, the 
great botanist, spoke of himself as "one who is scien- 
tifically, and in his own fashion, a Darwinian ; philo- 



^ First Principles, p. 34. 



WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD 



21 



sopMcally a convinced theist, and religiously an 
accepter of the creed commonly called the Nicene as 
the expression of the Christian faith/^ 

Let us take an example to show the reasonable- 
ness of this position. We have just used as an illus- 
tration of the wonder of God^s universe the existence 
of the human eye. If now it is discovered that this 
marvellous sight-mechanism was not formed with all 
its present properties, but was originally a membrane 
so made that it has developed into an eye, does that 
make the old argument antiquated and obsolete ? Not 
at all — the wonder seems even greater when we ask, 
What must He be who could endow a simple mem- 
brane with such possibilities of change? Is Paley^s 
old example of design in the watch (which we used 
above) any the less valid, if we discover that instead 
of being made at once and coming from the hand of 
the manufacturer, the watch was but a bit of steel 
which the maker endowed with such properties that 
in time it was bound to grow into a watch? God, 
moreover, not merely gave the original impulse, but 
was active in the work throughout its whole progress 
— a Creator who works from end to end in His crea- 
tion and in every step of the onward progress shows 
His presence in the design and purpose everywhere 
manifested. Mysteries only multiply if we try to 
conceive of a Creator who works in this fashion, 
quietly, slowly, and unseen. 

Speaking of the mystery of the Godhead, one is 
reminded of the argument from the beauty as well as 
the utility of this world of ours. Beauty, like truth. 



22 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



is a reality outside of ourselves. It must have its 
seat somevrhere — and the existence of relative beauty 
here implies perfect beauty in Him who made this 
earthly splendor. Finite beauty implies infinite 
beauty; the beautiful landscape^ cloudy sunset, face, 
figure, are but drops in the great ocean of beauty. 

Once more, beauty has a strange, mystic power; 
we cannot explain it, nobody can explain it. And so 
it prepares us for the profound mysteriousness of 
God, from whom all beauty comes. Clouds and dark- 
ness are round about Him. With God, and the 
thoughts of God, there is always for us an inherent, 
unfathomable, spirit-stirring mystery. 

If the world that lies about us, in its usefulness 
and its aesthetic charm, tells us of a Creator of in- 
finite wisdom, boundless power, and deepest mystery, 
the world that lies witliin us tells of the personal 
existence and moral grandeur of this infinite Creator. 
When I look within, at myself, I know that I am a 
person, a being with a separate existence; I am my- 
self and am quite distinct from all that lies outside 
of this self. Moreover, I am a person who distin- 
guishes between right and wrong; I have an innate 
sense of goodness ; I know that there is righteousness 
and unrighteousness and I know that I am a free 
moral being who can choose between them. There is 
no force upon earth superior to human personality. 
Because this is so I know that in God must be found 
something to correspond to personality in myself, or 
else God is not Almighty; man is greater than He. 



WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD 



23 



To put it briefly, because I am a person I know that 
God must be a Person as well. He who created can- 
not be less than the infinite expression of His own 
creation, and because I am what I am God must be 
something like me, only in Him the likeness is carried 
to perfection. Personality in God does not mean that 
He is a sort of enlarged man, as some people in their 
crude way seem to think. It means rather, that God 
is more than mere energy or force; He is a Being 
who thinks, plans, wills, and acts — a Being who can 
be known as well as a Presence to be felt. 

The personality of God is of the very essence of 
religion. If He were nothing more than an imper- 
sonal energy, I could not pray to Him, I could not 
obey Him, I could not love Him; we cannot love, 
obey, pray to that which is only a neuter pronoun — It. 

For these reasons, then, I believe in God. I be- 
lieve He made the world and all that is therein; it 
must have come from some hand, and I believe it 
came from His. I believe that He is a Person, be- 
cause I know that I am, and He is infinitely greater 
than I. By His Personality I do not necessarily 
mean exactly what the word means as applied to 
human beings; I mean that in God there is that 
which corresponds to personality in men — corresponds 
to it, but is infinitely greater. I believe also that 
this Divine Person is a Moral Being, because He gave 
me my own sense of morality. 

I believe in God, and I cannot get away from this 
belief. The world within and the world without, the 



24 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



voice of conscience and the voice of nature, tell me 
that there is one God, the Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and 
invisible. I believe, and even though my belief do not 
rest on absolute proof, I keep on believing because my 
own heart tells me what other hearts have also 
learned — I believe in God because I need Him and I 
cannot do without Him. 



THE HOLY TRINITY 



25 



III. 

THE HOLY TRINITY 

yyi GST people seem to think that when they have 
/ \ learned to believe in the existence of God the 
Christian doctrine of the Trinity comes as an addi- 
tional demand on their faith. They regard it as 
comparatively simple to believe in a Supreme Being, 
but when they are asked to believe that in the unity 
of the Godhead there are three Divine Persons they 
regard this as a new burden on an already over- 
burdened creed. 

As a matter of fact, however, it is exceedingly 
difficult for the human reason, in any case, to gain a 
satisfactory conception of the inner life, the essence 
of the Godhead ; the thought is one beyond the grasp 
of finite intelligence. We see this the moment we 
think of any of God^s attributes. What can we under- 
stand, for example, of His self -existence, a life with- 
out source or origin, a great First Cause? Or try 
to conceive of His eternity, without beginning of days 
or end of years ; or of His omnipotence, a power which 
is almighty, yet exercised in accordance with definite 
laws and subject to moral limitations; or of His 



26 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



omnipresence^ by which we mean not simply that His 
influence is everywhere felt;, bnt that He Himself is 
in every part of His universe^, that all of God, so to 
speak, is everywhere at one and the same time ; or of 
His omniscience, including in this the thought of 
God's foreknowledge and man's free will. The idea 
of God whether as Trinity or Unity is utterly beyond 
our comprehension. 

Yet, while this is true, it may be possible — I am 
quite sure, indeed, that it is possible — to show that 
belief in God as Three Persons is much easier than 
acceptance of the Unitarian conception of the deity 
as a monad. Before we touch upon that, though, 
it may be well to call attention to some hints in 
nature, which prepare us for the Trinitarian concep- 
tion. Xot that these could ever have taught us the 
truth about God, had it not been fully revealed by 
Christ; but such tjipes and figures will prepare us 
for the substance and realitv, of which thev are but 
shadows. 

An illustration of the Trinity, unsatisfactory in- 
deed, but an illustration, nevertheless, is found in 
the sunbeam. It is absolutely one — we call it a beam 
of light — and yet in that unity there are three en- 
tities, light and heat and actinism. They exist to- 
gether, yet they are three. They are properties that 
can be distinguished, yet they are one. All of the 
sunbeam is light, all is heat, all is chemical action, 
and yet there are not three sunbeams, but one. Or, 
consider the human soul. It has three functions, 
knowing, feeling, willing. We cannot exercise these 



THE HOLY TRINITY 



27 



functions apart. We cannot know a thing without 
having some feeling or desire about it, however slight, 
or without acting, or declining to take action, in 
accordance with the desire; we cannot act about a 
thing, without the wish preceding the act ; we cannot 
have the wish without some previous knowledge of 
the thing. The human soul is absolutely one, and 
yet it is threefold. Since man is made in the image 
of God, we need not be surprised when Scripture tells 
us that something of the same kind, though higher 
and more mysterious, is true of God. 

The mysteries of nature, too, may prepare us for 
the mystery of God^s existence. Here we have on 
our side so good an authority as the great scientist 
Huxley himself, who, though he was not a believer in 
theism or in Christianity, based his position purely 
on the question of evidence and not on the difficulty 
of the revelation. On this very subject, in a letter to 
Bishop (then Canon) Gore, some years ago, he said: 
^^I have not the slightest objection to offer a priori 
[that is, on grounds of reason] to all the propositions 
of the three creeds of Christendom. The mysteries of 
the Church are child^s play compared with the mys- 
teries of Nature. The doctrine of the Trinity is not 
more puzzling than the necessary antinomies [that is, 
contradictions] of physical speculation.^^ In other 
words, as Bishop Gore says in commenting on the 
letter, a man like Huxley would recognize that human 
thought may well find itself baffled to conceive about 
what it still must believe. As an example, he re- 
minds us of what scientific writers say about the ether 



28 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



which is the vehicle of heat and light. It is described 
by physicists as diffused through all space, but though 
it is everywhere it cannot be discovered anywhere and 
when its properties are examined it seems to be at 
once a solid and a fluid. This is mysterious indeed, 
it passes our limited power of imagination ; but never- 
theless it appears to be true and is regarded as true 
by the scientific world.^ 

One who finds it difficult to conceive of a Trinity 
in Unity might well approach the subject, then, by 
thinking first of the mysteries of nature and so pre- 
paring himself for the mysteries of the faith. Or he 
might contemplate his own being — ^how fearfully and 
wonderfully he is made — lest he grow impatient at 
understanding so little of the infinite. 

It was said just now that it is easier to believe in 
God as three Persons than as one. Try to think it 
out, for example, in connection with the very idea 
of personality. We know that God has what corre- 
sponds to though it transcends personality, because 
He cannot be less than we are, whom He created — 
and personality is our greatest attribute. Whatever 
we mean by the personality of God is infinitely higher 
than what we mean by personality in men, but it is 
something that must run on similar lines. How, 
then, could there be the fullest and most complete per- 
sonality in God if He were a lone and solitary unit, 
without anything corresponding to personal com- 



^ Gore : The Incarnation of the Son of God. 



THE HOLY TRINITY 



29 



munion and intercourse? Imagine a God, seated 
alone in desolate grandeur, and then think of the 
Christian conception of God, in the relation of 
Father, Son, and Spirit, showing perfection of life, 
fulness of movement, intercourse, action, reciprocal 
love, and you will see what we mean by saying that 
such a God is easier to conceive of than the solitary, 
cold unit of those who reject Trinitarian teaching. 
As a matter of fact. Unitarians hesitate at the con- 
ception of God prior to the creation of the world, 
because of these very difficulties. 

Or take the thought of God as love. If He is 
love, there must be something on which He is to 
expend His love. What or whom did He love, then, 
before the creation of the world? Was His love in- 
finitely expended upon Himself ? We cannot but feel 
that such a thought is shocking to our best instincts 
— a monstrous selfishness is the only picture the 
language suggests. But if, on the other hand, there 
are different Persons in the Godhead, then one Divine 
Person may lavish the infinite wealth of His love 
upon another Divine Person who is infinitely worthy 
to receive and return it, and we have a picture of God 
as perfect love, love in Himself, as of the very essence 
of His being, and apart from any relations with a 
created world. 

Once more, if God is love, how are we to reconcile 
all that is seemingly hard and harsh and unlovely in 
the world with His infinite affection? May we not 
say without contradiction that it is absolutely im- 
possible to make the needed reconciliation except 



30 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



througli belief in the divinity of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the Son who was manifested in human life to 
show in that life just what the Father is? The 
doctrine of Christ's divinity carries with it, we need 
hardly explain, the doctrine of the Trinity. 

Of course, while all this is true, we could never 
of ourselves have discovered the doctrine of the 
Trinity; we are dependent upon revelation and the 
teaching of the Church for our knowledge of it. As 
to Scripture, this much may be said, that if the 
doctrine is not categorically declared there it is neces- 
sarily and plainly implied. We find clearly set forth 
the divinity of the Father, of the Son, and of the 
Spirit ; we have their equality declared ; we have them 
united under the one Xame in the baptismal formula. 
If it remained for the Church to choose the words by 
which the mysterious fact of their union should be 
expressed, she was compelled to do so by what she had 
experienced of the Son and of the Spirit. From the 
very beginning Christ had been worshipped as God 
and the formal statement that He was what He had 
always been accepted to be was a step made necessary 
by Christian experience. From the beginning the 
Holy Spirit had also been given divine honor, had 
been worshipped as on an equality with the Father 
who sent Him. When the assaults of heresy made 
some statement of the facts necessary, the Church was 
but declaring in careful language what had long been 
accepted in thought. Indeed, it is necessary to bear 
in mind always that the Church never set forth the 
doctrine of the Trinity merely as a shibboleth by 



THE HOLY TRINITY 



31 



which to exclude all who could not use the test word 
aright. She founds rather, men denying what she 
held most sacred, refusing to accept what had been 
instinctively believed, and she was forced to define in 
order to clarify her own faith. 

Abstruse as all this may sound, it will not be 
wasted time to try to think it out. It will be good 
for us to realize how little we are, when we come to 
place ourselves in contemplation of what is infinite 
and eternal. The humbling process will be the best 
possible exercise of devotion. Do you assure me that 
it would be far wiser to devote our energy to the pro- 
motion of practical religion? ^Tractical religion! 
Ah, how we cheat ourselves with phrases,^^ says the 
late Dr. Huntington. ^'^Show me the man whose soul 
is full of heavenly imaginings, who dwells largely 
among things not seen, whose thoughts often take 
flight from the edges of this buying and selling world, 
that they may strike out into the pure air and find 
rest upon the wing as the seabirds do, and I will show 
you one who will make the best of neighbors, the most 
public-spirited of citizens, the gentlest, kindest, 
truest, least arrogant of men. For, after all, the 
great thing in ^practical religion^ is to sink self ; and 
in this task we succeed best at moments when most 
we realize the littleness of man, the majesty of the 
Almighty.^^ 

Surely, thought about the Trinity is of impor- 
tance, then, in the religious life. It becomes of the 
greater value when we realize that this conception of 



32 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



God is the only conception which shows Him to ns as 
eternally productive^ all snflBcient within Himself, 
always and in His very essence a God of love ; that it 
helps ns both to think about Him and to worship 
Him with intelligence and enables us to recognize 
that human life can be in His image only by becoming 
continually more operative^ more fruitful^ more social. 

The Trinitarian may well challenge his Unitarian 
friends to a comparison of the two beliefs. As he 
knows already that the Churches doctrine is scriptural 
he will find added confidence in the assurance that it 
is more reasonable and^ best of all^ of more practical 
value as an incentive to unselfish living. 



THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST 33 



IV. 

THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST 

IT would be very interesting if we could print here 
just what everybody we know thinks about Christ. 
It was the question our Lord Himself asked, ^What 
think ye of Christ?'' "Whom say ye that I am?'' 

There are many people who do not understand 
how He can be both God and man and therefore 
flatly deny His divinity. If you were to ask these 
people just exactly what they do believe about Him, 
you would find, when they tried to put their thought 
into some positive form, that it was not positive at 
all, that their answers would be most vague and un- 
certain. They will not accept the doctrine that 
Christ is divine, but they will not be at pains to dis- 
cover precisely what they do think He is. Probably, 
if you were to pin them down to some definite an- 
swer, most of them would say that they think He 
was a good man, the best man the world has ever 
seen. Some would go further, and tell you that He 
was divine in the same sense in which all men are, 
though in greater degree ; that is, that God absolutely 
possessed and filled His whole life. But He is not 



34 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



God^ they will add; no^, Christ was a good man^ the 
best^ the purest, the holiest^ the most unselfish man 
that ever trod tliis earthy but He was not God in- 
carnate. 

Well^ let us see. Suppose some religious teacher 
were to stand before us and declare himself sent by 
God to lead us to a fuller knowledge of His divine 
character. Suppose he were to begin his work by 
saying that we are all of earthly origin^ while he was 
from above. Suppose he were to summon us to do 
him reverence. Suppose he were to tell us that he was 
the way^ the truth, the life, the light of the world, 
the good shepherd of souls. Suppose he were to re- 
peat this in every conceivable form, were to tell us 
that we must honor him as we honor God, that we 
cannot come to God except through him, that he and 
God were one, that if we believe in God we must 
believe also in him, that if we do not love him it will 
show that we do not love God. 

What would you say of such a man? You could 
not call him good. You would declare him either a 
lunatic or an imposter. Xo religious teacher to-day 
would dare point men to himself; none could have 
any influence if he were not willing to acknowledge 
his own imperfections. A religious teacher may say, 
''I trjv' ''I think,^'^ ''I feel sure,^^ ''I hope,^^ ^^^I be- 
lieve^' ; but he must never say, "I am.^'^ A sane man 
who spoke of himself as never committing sin would 
be consigned at once to oblivion and contempt. 

Now, bearing all this in mind, notice our Lord's 
self-assertion, His silence as to any moral defect. His 



THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST 35 



intense authoritativeness, His claim of co-equality 
with the Father^ His assertion that He is essentially 
one with God^ His call to men to make Him an object 
of faith just as they believe in God, to trust in Him 
as they trust in God, to honor Him as they honor God, 
and to love Him because to do so is a necessary mark 
of the children of God. See how He declares that no 
rival claim however strong, no natural affection how- 
ever deep, may interpose between Him and the soul 
of His follower. "^^He that loveth father or mother 
more than Me is not worthy of Me ; and he that loveth 
son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.^^ 
See how He asserts His absolute sinlessness, challeng- 
ing men to find any spot in Him. "Which of you 
convinceth Me of sin?^^ Eead scores of passages 
where Christ makes such claims and then ask if He 
can be sincere, unselfish, humble, and good, if He is 
not more than man. As St. Augustine put it, 
"Christ, if He is not God, is not a good man.^^ 

Consider, too, that these divine claims of Jesus 
are what brought about His death. Why was He 
crucified? Nicodemus was not simply speaking for 
himself, he probably expressed the sentiment of many 
of his co-religionists, when he said, "We know that 
Thou art a teacher come from God.^^ But just be- 
cause Jesus was not content with that admission, 
because He claimed to be more than a divinely com- 
missioned teacher and asserted His equality with the 
Father, He was taken to judgment and to death. He 
was crucified on the charge of blasphemy, because He 
made Himself equal with God. Was He, then, in 



36 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



making this claim, an ignorant, half -crazed fanatic? 
Either that ; or else He was a thoroughly unprincipled 
man ; or else He was what He claimed to be, H^ was 
God. 

Does one find it hard to believe that Christ is 
God in the flesh? Well, it is harder to believe that 
He is truly a good man if He is anything less than 
this. ^^It is easier,^^ says Dr. Liddon,^ "for a good 
man to believe that in a world where he is encom- 
passed by mysteries, where his own being itself is a 
consummate mystery, the Moral Author of the won- 
ders around him should for great moral purposes have 
taken to Himself a created form, than that the one 
Human Life which realizes the idea of humanity, 
the one Man who is at once perfect strength and per- 
fect tenderness, the one Pattern of our race in whom 
its virtues are combined, and from whom its vices are 
eliminated, should have been guilty, when speaking 
about Himself, of an arrogance, of a self-seeking, of 
an insincerity, which if admitted must justly degrade 
Him far below the moral level of millions among His 
unhonored worshippers. Thus our Lord^s human 
glory fades before our eyes when we attempt to con- 
ceive of it apart from the truth of His divinity. He 
is only perfect as Man, because He is truly God. If 
He is not God, He is not an humble or an unselfish 
man.^^ 

Or think, once more, of Christ's claim to judge 
the world. "The Father judgeth no man, but hath 



^ The Divinity of Our Lord, lecture iv. 



THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST 37 



committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men 
should honor the Son^ even as they honor the Father/^ 
We know what it means to sit in judgment over one 
of our fellows. It means, if we are to give a perfect 
judgment, that we must know his whole life, read 
every thought, consider every word, be acquainted 
with every act. It means that we must be able to 
read his heart like an open book, that we must have 
thorough understanding of all his motives; for 
motives as well as actions must be taken under con- 
sideration. It means that we must have perfect 
knowledge of all his past, his inherited tendencies, 
his early environment, his peculiar temptations, the 
strength of his resistance of them. We must be able 
to look into his eyes, and read him through and 
through. 

Consider, therefore, what Christ claims when He 
asserts that to Him it is given to know in this way 
not one man but all men, not one soul but every 
soul that ever faced sin, every man, woman, or child 
who is now on earth, or ever came into the world, or 
is yet to be born, to live and work and love and pray 
and struggle here. To make such a claim is to de- 
clare one^s self omniscient, and to assert one's om- 
niscience is to call one's self God. Christ did make 
this claim and we come back again, therefore, to the 
same dilemma : if He was not insane or deluded, He 
was either the incarnation of wickedness, or He was 
good. If He was good He was also God, as He 
claimed to be. 



38 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



In all this^ let it be noted, we are but touching 
the border ground of the proof of Christ^s divinity. 
We have to remember not only what He said about 
Himself, but what others said of Him. Those men 
who companied with Him for the few years of His 
ministry came to think of Him and speak of Him in 
ways that are consistent only with the most thorough- 
going belief in His deity. What, for example, did 
St. Thomas mean, when he fell at His feet and cried, 
''My Lord and my God'' ? What did St. Paul mean, 
when he said, ''In Him dwelleth all the fulness of 
the Godhead bodily''? What did he mean, again, 
when he said of Christ that "being in the form of 
God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, 
but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon 
Him the form of a servant, and was made in the 
likeness of men"? What did the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews mean, when he called our 
Lord Christ "the brightness" of the Father's "glory", 
and "the express image of His Person"? What did 
St. John mean, when he called Him the Word of 
God, and said that "in the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" ? 
What must this same St. John have believed, when, 
his soul thrilling at the thought of the wonderful 
thing that had come into his life, he used such lan- 
guage as this of his Master ? Eead it : "That which 
was from the beginning, which we have heard, which 
we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of 



THE DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST 39 



life; that which we have seen and heard declare we 
unto yon^ that ye also may have fellowship with us : 
and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with 
His Son Jesus Christ/^ ^^We know that the Son of 
God is come, and hath given us an understanding, 
that we may know Him that is true, and we are in 
Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This 
is the true God, and eternal life/^ 

What did they mean, and what did they believe ? 
What but that J esus our Lord was in truth the divine 
Son of the Father? And what can we believe but 
just what they did? What think you of Christ? 
Do the Gospels give us a substantially accurate ac- 
count of His life ? And did His disciples know Him ? 
And was He a good man? And if so, was He not 
also God ? 

Jesus Christ is indeed the revelation of the 
Father; we really know God only as He is manifest 
in the Son. Apart from Christ, God is as it were 
but a dim idea, a vague conception, and our hearts 
cry out for further knowledge : "Show us the Father, 
and it sufficeth us.^^ In Christ, and through Him, 
God becomes an intense reality : "He that hath seen 
Me hath seen the Father.^^ 



40 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



V. 

THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD 

IIST the Nicene Creed we say that we '^T^elieve in one 
Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God 
. . . who for us men and for our salvation came 
down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy 
Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man/^ 

What we have just seen about our Lord^s divine 
self-consciousness forces us to a conviction of this 
truth. So it was with the early disciples. They 
went about with Jesus while He lived on earth, and 
they found Him to be perfect man in everything that 
pertains to human nature. Then gradually, as they 
saw the daily miracle of His life and listened to His 
wonderful words and saw His marvellous works, 
they came to the conviction that He was also perfect 
God; and this belief, but half formed at His death, 
was confirmed in His resurrection, through which 
He was seen as Lord of life and victor over the grave 
and was ^^declared to be the Son of God with power^\ 
The apostles did not reason out the Incarnation 
from the Godhead downward; they reached it by 
a natural ascent from the manhood upward. They 



THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD 41 



saw that nothing less than this truth could explain 
all that they had learned, as their eyes gazed upon 
and their hands handled the Word of Life. St. 
John^s Gospel, which was written to give the record 
of the apostles^ faith, traces the growth of this con- 
viction, and closes (for the last chapter is supple- 
mentary) with the cry of St. Thomas, kneeling in 
penitence and adoring faith at the feet of his Master, 
^^My Lord and my God.'^ Chrisf s first disciples 
^^came to believe in His Godhead through their ex- 
perience of His manhood; and, coming so to believe, 
they handed on their faith as an inheritance to the 
Christian Church, an inheritance which the record of 
the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, and the 
perpetual experience of His power in those who be- 
lieve, has made continually more credible.^^ ^ 

Christianity is the religion of the Incarnation. 
And yet, strangely enough, thousands of those who 
profess and call themselves Christians have the 
vaguest possible notion of what the Incarnation 
means. Let us try to state the doctrine. Briefly, it 
tells us that according to the Christian faith Jesus 
Christ is both God and Man, perfect God and perfect 
Man (that is, having every essential element of both 
natures), but that while He has two distinct and 
perfect natures He is one divine Person. A simple 
illustration will help to a clear understanding of this 
central truth of the Christian religion. 



^ Gore : The Creed of the Christian. 



42 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Suppose that a man^ for love of some of the 
creatures beneath him^ were permitted to become one 
of them. Suppose^ for instance^ that a man had 
devoted his life to the care of birds, and saw that 
through some great mistake in their mode of life 
they were fast d}TJig off. Suppose now (though, of 
course, it is humanly impossible) that he could be- 
come a bird, so as to teach birds how to live. He 
would have to enter into their nature through the 
ordinary laws by which their life begins ; yet he would 
retain his human personality ; and, having become one 
of them, he would still be able to see all things from 
a human point of view. With his man^s mind he 
could see their mistakes. Through the nature which 
he held in common with them he could teach them the 
remedy. But he had lived long before he became one 
of them, and he still remained what he was before, 
only taking up their nature that he might help and 
teach them and come closer to them than before. 

So Jesus Christ is God. He had lived from all 
eternity, co-equal with the Father and the Holy 
Spirit. At the Incarnation He entered through the 
womb of Mary into man^s nature. He saw man mis- 
taking the meaning of life, living for pleasure or sin, 
and He said, I, the Son of God, will enter into man's 
nature ; with My divine mind I will see his faults and 
the remedy; through the nature which I assume I 
will be able to show him this remedy. 

If this is true, then it is also true that when 
Jesus Christ does an}i:hing, or says an}i;hing, it is 
God who is speaking or acting. Xot that there are 



THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD 43 



two persons in the two natures^ God the Son and the 
man Jesus ; it is the one Person^ the Son, the Second 
Person of the Trinity, and He is merely translating 
the life of God into onr ways of thinking and acting. 
When an infant is born, a new person comes into the 
world; but when Jesus Christ was born, no new per- 
son entered into life. It was the same Divine Person 
who had lived from all eternity with the Father, and 
now took a new nature unto Himself and lived in 
that nature, manifesting in it the divine truth and 
beauty that were His before, making God as it were 
visible to men, and living His new life, our human 
life, as He would have us live it. No man had seen 
God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in 
the bosom of the Father, came and declared Him — 
made Him known. 

Faith in the incarnation of the Son of God is in 
no way dependent upon the virgin birth of our Lord. 
We learn that Jesus is the Son of God exactly as the 
first disciples discovered it, by living with Him long 
enough and closely enough to see that the real miracle 
is the continuous miracle of His life. That is the 
method of approach by which, in the last chapter, we 
came to the fact of His divinity. Once we have 
arrived at a knowledge of who and what Jesus Christ 
was, belief in His miraculous birth falls into place as 
a secondary miracle. We believe in the unique birth 
because we believe in the unique Person. In other 
words, if Jesus Christ really is divine, if at His birth 
an Eternal and Divine Personality entered upon a 



44 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



new mode of existence and manifested Himself in 
human form^ then it would hardly be strange or 
unreasonable that His birth should be unlike other 
births. The fact of Jesus Himself is so unique and 
miraculous that we may rightly expect the method of 
His entrance into the earthly life to be unique and 
miraculous also. Face to face with a life that cannot 
be explained save as the unveiling of the Deity, we 
ask how it would be possible for the Eternal Son to 
clothe Himself in human flesh after the ordinary 
manner of human conception. Here is something 
which has no equal or likeness in the annals of earth. 
It is not the case of a new man coming into life, but 
of the Creator of all things manifesting Himself in 
that life. If miracle is ever in place as a witness to 
the intervention of a new power, the coming of the 
Son of Man into our earthly life was surely a fit 
occasion for miracle.^ 

It is this, then, that we believe about Christ. It 
is our conviction that He cannot be explained in 
human terms alone. He is something more than the 
highest product of humanity. He is the God-Man. 

In so revealing God and man, the Eternal Son 
shows us some things which, apart from a belief in the 
Incarnation, it would be exceedingly difficult for us 
to realize. He shows us what God is; He shows us 
also what man should be. He shows us, for example, 
God's love, God's personality, God's presence with us ; 



' See my book, The Experiment of Faith, page 107, etc. 



THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD 45 



He shows us, by living in it perfectly, the essential 
nobility of man^s nature. Let us reserve the fact of 
the unveiling of Deity for subsequent chapters and 
consider now the other thought: The Incarnation 
tells us of the inherent worth of our humanity. Were 
our nature wholly bad, God the Son could not have 
taken it to Himself ; since He did so take it. He has 
purified it, sanctified it, lifted it up into His own 
divine life. 

Remember now that Christ is one Person, God the 
Son, in two natures, that of God and that of man. 
Among the early heretics was one named Nestorius, 
who did not believe this. His explanation was some- 
thing like this — and it is especially interesting as 
expressing clearly what many people, in a vague way, 
think now. He maintained that Mary really "gave 
birth to something which was human first and after- 
wards was taken into ^conjunction^ with the Eternal 
Word^^; that the Son of Mary was human; at His 
birth, or perhaps not until His baptism, the Word, 
the Son of God, made Him the special receptacle of 
deity. There were really two persons in Christ, the 
man who was born of a human mother, and God who 
had entered into such close union with this man that 
he was filled with the divine energy and was even 
able to "rank as God^\ 

This doctrine was condemned by the Church. We 
can readily see why. For it really does away with 
the Incarnation. If God simply came down into the 
man Christ, then He took upon Himself not all 
humanity but simply one bit of humanity; He did 



46 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



not Himself become man, He simply inspired and 
glorified one man by manifesting Himself through 
him. If Ifestorins was rights then the Gospel is the 
story of the exaltation of jnst one of God^s creatures. 
If the Churches doctrine of the Incarnation is accepted, 
then God really became flesh and dwelt among us, 
tabernacled in humanity, not in a man. If that is 
true, all mankind was exalted in Christ, not one single 
person; all mankind was lifted up into the Gx)dhead, 
potentially at least ; all mankind was sanctified by the 
indwelling of the Holy One of God. We know, in 
that case, that there is something about our human 
nature so splendid that God can really enter into that 
nature and live in it without ceasing to be God; and 
since humanity is essentially so glorious a thing we 
know that it can be lifted up in Christ back to what 
God intended it to be. 

The truth of the Incarnation, therefore, is not a 
mere dead bit of metaphysics. Surely not — it is a 
fact of practical importance; a dogma, but a dogma 
which like every other doctrine of the Christian creed 
influences our conception of life. If we believe in the 
Incarnation — in a real incarnation, not such a mys- 
tical conjunction as Nestorius taught — we believe 
that Christ sums up all humanity in Himself. He 
is to us in something of the relation in which a com- 
posite photograph stands to the pictures that formed 
it. Christ has in Him all of mankind. He is man, 
rather than a man, and in Him are united all the 
members of the human race; you are there and so 
am I; indeed, there is no one who ever has lived or 



THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD 47 



ever will live in whom there is not something which 
goes to contribute to the universal character of Him 
who is the Son of Man. 

And if this is so — if Christ is the sum of all 
humanity^, if we find in Him something in common 
with every human being who has ever walked this 
earth — then every human being, however poor or 
degraded, however fallen in wickedness, has within 
him a germ, a seed, which if it can be developed is 
capable of a new life and a glorious resurrection. The 
fact of the Incarnation teaches us to recognize a new 
and ineffaceable relation between man and man. If our 
Lord took upon Him humanity. He took upon Him 
all types ; and every man, white or black, high or low, 
practised in holiness or defiled by sin, the saint of the 
cloister and the outcast of the street, the Christian and 
the heathen — every man has in him some likeness to 
Christ. If the Christ-life can be applied to him 
he may be made anew after Christ^s perfect likeness. 
None may be forgotten or despised. The Hebrew 
would not step on a piece of paper, lest it should have 
written on it the Name of God, and we cannot look 
down upon God^s lowest creature, because on him is 
stamped, however faintly, the image of the Lord 
Christ. 

It has been beautifully said, "There is hardly a 
roadside pond or pool which has not as much land- 
scape in it as above it. It is not the dull, brown, 
muddy thing we suppose it to be. It has a heart 
like ourselves, and in the bottom of that, there are the 
boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking 



48 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



grass^ and all manner of hues of variable pleasant 
light out of the sky. iSTay, that ugly gutter which 
stagnates over the drain bars in the heart of the great 
city is not altogether base. Down in that, if you will 
look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue 
of the far-off sky, and the passing of the pure clouds. 
It is at your own will that you see in that despised 
stream the refuse of the streets, or the image of the 
sky.^^ What is true here is true of man as well. 
Jesus Christ is our pledge of that. He came to seek 
and to save those who were lost, and He saves them 
by coming into their nature, that this nature may be 
brought into touch with His. So long as breath re- 
mains to them, so long as He is reflected ever so 
faintly in them, we may have hope. N"o one else can 
see into the depths of their hearts as Christ can, and 
till He has given them up we must never despair. 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S LOVE 49 



VL 

THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S LOVE 

ESUS CHRIST shows us what man may be. He 



days to be sure of what God really is. The last four 
years have been years that try men^s souls. Sin and 
sorrow, suffering and death, have been seen in sharper 
outline than ever before. Is it any wonder that men 
ask whether a world like this can be God^s handiwork ? 
What kind of a God is He whose universe is seamed 
and scarred with war and all its hideous and horrible 
f rightfulness ? Yes, we want to know, with absolute 
certainty, about God. Is He a God of love ? 

The troubled questionings which rose in men^s 
hearts when war brought forth such a multitude of 
sorrows are the same old problems which the world 
has always faced; only now they come to us more 
sharply and painfully pressing. Often before men 
and women have been troubled and have doubted 
God^s love. In the presence of some great personal 
sorrow or frightful public calamity, or contemplating 
the sin and evil that lie all about us, it must be that 
sometimes faith will falter, if it does not fail. With 




It is good in these 



50 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the world full of suJffering and sorrow it is not sur- 
prising that belief in the existence of a good and 
loving God should sometimes waver. Even the most 
thoughtful and religious must feel in the presence of 
such a mystery a call to sound the depths of their 
convictions and ask upon what solid basis their 
religious belief rests. 

I called not long ago on a friend who only a year 
before had married a sweet and lovely young woman^ 
of whom we were all very fond. They had just those 
few months of happiness^ and then the wife died, and 
with her their newborn baby. I call to mind now 
another case of most pitiful bereavement. A widowed 
mother was left to care for two little ones ; for years 
she strained every effort to give them the privileges 
and advantages that would fit them for life. She had 
worked all those years, with the constant hope before 
her that they would some day be a comfort and help 
to her, would some day, when life opened more 
brightly for them, bless her for all the loving sacrifice 
of those years. The boy had just finished his school 
life and had secured a fine business position and the 
girl was just growing into years of young womanhood, 
when disease carried both away, and the mother was 
left desolate. Indeed it is true that the problems 
the war thrust upon us were old problems. The diffi- 
culty of faith is not increased when instances of such 
sorrow are multiplied a million times. It is just as 
great a problem, if one mother lose her baby. 

What could one say of God's love, to these broken- 
hearted mourners? What would any man dare say. 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S LOVE 51 



if it were not for all that the life of the Man of Sor- 
rows shows us? There are many possible explana- 
tions of the meaning of suffering and sorrow, but none 
of these explanations really satisfies the troubled soul. 
The great clue to the problem is a steadfast faith in 
the divinity of Jesus Christ. If we have not such a 
faith, we are all at sea. Those who do possess it need 
to realize its power in solving the difficulties of life, 
that they may make others feel its steadying influence. 

If Christ is the Eternal Son of the Father, there 
can be no question about the love of God. There may 
be many things in the world that seem to contradict 
that love, but though we are mystified in the presence 
of all this evil we are not at an utter loss. We know 
that God is love, because we know that Jesus Christ 
is love — and Christ is God. His life is the perfection 
of love — no one can deny that. If He were merely 
a man, the fact would mean nothing to us ; we should 
have but another instance of a surpassingly good man 
— one more noble, loving heart — struggling against 
evil and apparently deserted by God, conquered in the 
end. If, however, Christ is more than man, if He is 
God Incarnate ; if He came on earth to restore sinful, 
suffering, sorrowing humanity into harmony with the 
divine plan; if, moreover. He came, not of Himself 
alone, but His loving purpose had its origin also in 
the Pather^s will ; in other words, if ^^God so loved the 
world that He gave His only-begotten Son^^ — then we 
may hold our faith firm, no matter what dreadful 
calamity or heart-breaking personal sorrow attacks it. 
We may not understand why God permits the exist- 



52 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



ence of pain and evil and sorrow — ^we may not under- 
stand, but we know; we know that God is love, 
because we know tbat Jesus Christ is love, and Christ 
is God. God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, once 
walked this earth ; and no man can look at Christ and 
doubt His infinite affection. Did He love men ? See 
Him as the leper pleads to be healed. ^^And Jesus 
stretched forth His hand and touched him^^ — touched 
the man who had not felt the warmth and pressure of 
a human hand since his loathsome disease came upon 
himi — ^^touched him, and said, I will ; be thou clean.^^ 
Did Christ love men ? See Him on the cross, praying 
for His murderers; see Him, dying that He might 
redeem us. ^^Surely He hath borne our griefs, and 
carried our sorrows ; yet we did esteem Him stricken, 
smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded 
for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniqui- 
ties; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; 
and with His stripes we are healed.^^ Who can con- 
template the cross and remain unmoved? Who, as 
he draws near to Calvary, is not hushed into silence ? 
The offering lifted up there is the supreme exhibition 
of love, in its length and breadth and depth and 
height so great that it ^^passeth knowledge^\ 

Let me repeat, however, at the risk of being te- 
dious, that all this would prove nothing, were Christ 
but a man. We see around us now men who love 
their fellows; would it prove more to be told that 
this was a man who loved them to perfection? If 
He is God — then when we see how He loved us we 
begin to see how God loves us and whatever of ill 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S LOVE 53 



we are called upon to bear we can continue in patience 
to trust in His goodness. There is God Incarnate, 
we say, and in His presence we believe and are sure. 
Whether all things can be explained or not, we know 
in whom we have believed. Our God is the God who 
once entered into the tragedy of human life to show 
that He understands and sympathizes. 

Look at it again from another point of view. 
The thought of Christ^s divinity assures us also of the 
Father^s affection for us ; for it teaches us to see how 
^^God commendeth His love toward us, in that He 
spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us 
all.^^ ^^In this was manifested the love of God 
toward us, because that God sent His only-begotten 
Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He 
loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for 
our sins.^^ Had God sent a man into the world, a 
good man who lived a righteous life and died a self- 
sacrificing death, and then had God accepted this 
sacrifice as a ransom for other men, it would hardly 
have showed God as just, much less loving; but if 
God Himself came to save us, if He gave His own Son 
— there was love indeed, love on the part of the Son, 
and love also on the part of the Father! A pious 
English cottager, on hearing the text, ^^God so loved 
the world,^^ exclaimed, ^^Ah! that was love. I could 
have given myself, but I could never have given my 
son.^^ Since then many have given their dearest and 
best in France and Flanders, in supreme sacrifice, 



54 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Surely it must make them understand better the 
Fathers part in the sacrifice of Calvary. 

So the fact of the Incarnation gives us the best 
clue that can be found in solving the mysteries of sin 
and sorrow. The great secret of the Church is that 
this worlds however much of the strain and stress of 
pain and terror there may be about it^ is indeed ruled 
by Almighty Love. That is the fact of which the 
doctrine is only the abstract expression; that is the 
great fact which men are doubting when they doubt 
this doctrine; that is the great fact which the Bible 
puts for us beyond all question, not simply by naming 
the doctrine, but by telling us the stor}^ of the Christ 
who came down from heaven that we might have life. 

It seems almost too good to be true, does it not ? 
In realit}^ it is too great and splendid not to be true. 
There is a poem of Browning in which Karshish, the 
Arab physician, writes a letter to his friend Ahib to 
tell of meeting Lazarus of Bethany and of the latter^s 
belief that the One who raised him from the grave 
Himself was God. Karshish plays about the thought 
with a strange fascination ; he cannot dismiss it from 
his mind. Suppose it were true ! '^^The very God ! 
Think, Ahib r' he writes. ''So the All-Great were the 
All-Loving too.^^ 

Surely, were the story of Jesus Christ better 
known the real message of His life would be apparent. 
God is not a God of lonely majesty and self suffi- 
ciency. Once He came visibly among men to show 
them what He really is. The man who has seen Jesus 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD3 LOVE 55 



has seen God and has learned the secret of all secrets, 
that God is love. The Christian believer walks through 
a world of sorrow with peace in his soul/ Years ago 
Browning, in another wonderful poem, made David 
tell Saul of a God such as the Christian worships : 

'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! My flesh that 
I seek 

In the Godhead! I seek and I find it! Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me 
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this 
hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the 
Christ stand. 



^ See my Back to Christ, chapter ii. 



56 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



VII. 

THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S PERSONALITY 

THEEE are very few men who have not some 
realization, more or less intense^ of the existence 
of a Supreme Power bearing some sort of relation 
to the world. They may never have heard of Herbert 
Spencer, but they would agree with him, if they had 
heard of liim, when he tells us, as the result of his 
philosophic study of the subject, that ^'it is absolutely 
certain that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite 
and Eternal Energ}' from which all things proceed.^^ 
Man is born, almost, with this idea pressing upon 
him; he cannot escape it. Xo matter how skeptical 
he may be, no matter how careless his life, no matter 
how little he may think it possible to know about 
God — if there be a God — this one simple conviction 
he cannot escape, that somewhere in the universe, 
whether it be a power unknowable, a blind force, an 
impersonal activity, whatever it may be, somewhere 
there is an infinite and eternal energ}', an energy 
from which all creation has sprung. Sometimes, sls 
he pauses in the hurry and bustle of a careless life, 
this thought will be borne in upon him with special 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD3 PERSONALITY 57 



force, burdening and oppressing him with its awful 
presence. Whatever he may believe or disbelieve, 
when he gets by himself, in the loneliness of his own 
room or out under the stillness of the midnight sky, 
back will come this instinct that he is not really alone, 
that some power holds him in its grasp, some energy 
is pushing him on, somewhere and somehow there is 
a force above him which he can never get away from, 
that envelops him and seizes him and in some mys- 
terious way controls his life. 

It will be seen at once that such a belief as this 
really is either no knowledge of God at all, or no 
such knowledge of Him as man, if he has a spark of 
what we call religion, needs and must long for; yet 
it seems sometimes as if it were pretty much as far 
as some people have ever gone in their thinking about 
heavenly things. Their main idea of God is this 
thought of some eternal power, in the presence of 
which they feel a momentary awe and oppression. 
They fear God, when they stop to think of Him, much 
as a child fears the darkness or the thunder. 

ISTow religion is the worship and service of a Su- 
preme Being, and therefore for religion to have any 
hold on men it is necessary that they should think 
about God, primarily, not as a Power but as a Person. 
We cannot really offer God an act of worship, we 
cannot give Him any genuine service, we cannot pray 
to Him, unless we have a deep and certain realization 
of His personal being. This is just what we find so 
hard to get, just what men have always found hard 
to gain. All that we know of personality we know 



58 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



through men and women whom we have seen and 
with whom we have had direct intercourse. How 
then can we ever realize the personality of God — 
whom we have not seen^ whom no man can see? 
Again and again there comes over us the awful sense 
of His presence: again and again we feel our own 
moral responsibility and begin to realize that there 
must be some One who sees and judges: again and 
again we tell ourselves that God must be more than 
an ever-present impersonal force, that He must be 
a Being who in some way acts as do the finite beings 
who are made in His image: but it is all a hard and 
painful struggle against heavy odds. ''Shew us the 
Father.** we say. in the words of St. Philip: '"shew 
us the Father, and it suflBceth us.** If we could have 
but one glimpse of God: if we could but have some 
vision that would assure us that He is a Person who 
knows us and with whom we may have communion 
and fellowship; if we could but rise out of this 
ignorance of His manner of life and think of Him 
as something more than energy, infinite and eternal 
though it be I ^'Shew us the Father.** Let us see 
Him; let us know Him personally, after the same 
fashion in which we know our earthly friends. Then 
everything will be easy, then faith will never fail, then 
we shall be able to pray with earnestness, then we can 
give ourselves to His service, then we can yield Him 
personal devotion and pay Him homage and worship. 

As we long thus for this deeper knowledge of 
God, our Lord Christ comes to us, Christ the Incar- 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S PERSONALITY 59 



nate Son^ and says, "Have I been so long time with 
yon, and yet hast thon not known Me? He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father/^ 

Ah ! There is the answer to all onr craving. Here 
is God. He that hath seen Christ hath seen God. 
The Word, the Son of God, the express image, the 
stamped copy of His Person, became flesh and dwelt 
among us and from that moment it has been easier 
to know God, easier to realize His eternal personal 
being, easier to come to Him and find in Him a 
Friend and a Father. All along we have been grasp- 
ing up after the Infinite and have failed to hold it 
fast; now the Infinite has stooped to our finite level, 
and we may know God as we know one another. 

How plain it is ! All through their long training 
with the Lord Christ the disciples were being pre- 
pared for this. They were not let at once into the 
secret of His divinity ; but they were brought to know 
Him, allowed to meet with Him, day by day grew 
to be on more intimate terms with Him; in His 
words and deeds they saw the brightness of God^s 
glory, and as they learned to know Christ they felt 
themselves gradually understanding more of God, 
they felt a new life within them, they saw by a new 
light. Then one day, when they had reached the 
height of personal intimacy with the Master, He said 
to them, "I and My Father are One. He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father .^^ N"ow that you know 
Me, He seemed to mean, you know God. You have 
longed to draw near to Him, and to see Him in the 
very essence of His being. Now you may; for you 



60 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



have seen and known Me^ and when you see Me you 
see My Father also, you see God. 

How plain it was; how simple, even when He 
had gone away, had left earth for Heaven! They 
had seen God, had talked with Him and lived with 
Him : that was what those three years of discipleship 
with Christ meant. They had seen and heard and 
handled the Word of Life; they beheld His glory 
shining out in His human life and henceforth they 
could never forget. Back they went in memory to 
all their life with Him, to the days when they had 
questioned Him about their perplexities, when they 
had carried their troubles to Him, when they had 
asked Him of this thing and that, when they had 
knelt at His feet and offered Him their reverent 
service. Kow they saw that they had been doing all 
that with God — God whom they had longed to see 
and know. 

And how plain it is for us now ! As we read the 
Gospels we find there the picture of a Person who 
once walked this earth of ours, with whom men once 
talked, whom they knew as a Friend and loved as a 
Brother. As we read we begin to know and love Him 
too. By and by we see that this was no mere man, 
that He was and is God, our God forever and ever. 
Seeing that, we see that God is a Person such as was 
this Man of Galilee, a Being whom we may know, 
love, honor, and worship, to whom we may pray with 
the certainty that He hears and answers — no blind 
force or power, but in some way One like ourselves, 
only infinitely more than we are. 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S PERSONALITY 61 

There have been times, perhaps, when we were 
not able to realize that personality; times when we 
felt only the dull weight of a presence that oppressed 
ns but gave us no peace, no comfort, no joy; times 
when we could not be certain that God knew, or 
listened, or would help. But now we go back to our 
Bible ; and, reading it in the light of this Incarnation 
that has become so plain, we have our thought of God 
transformed; we believe, and feel that we can doubt 
no more, for we know that this is the Christ, the Son 
of the Living God. 



62 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



YIII. 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S PRESENCE 
*HEEE are two ways of tliinking about God. 



1 We may think of His immanence or of His 
transcendence. By the immanence of God we mean 
His presence and activity in every part of His crea- 
tion. The motion of the planet in its orbit and the 
dropping of a leaf in the breeze of summer alike dis- 
play His power. By God^s transcendence, on the 
other hand, we mean His position without and be- 
yond nature ; we think of Him as dwelling above the 
world, guiding and directing its movements. 

It is this latter thought which we more frequently 
associate with God's personality. When we think of 
His immanence we are apt to rest in the idea of 
energy, force, power universally excited; we think of 
a divine presence, but we are likely to have a verj^ 
indefinite conception of that presence, corresponding 
to the vague feeling of awe that oppresses us as we 
contemplate nature in her more solemn moods. In 
order to have the conception of God's personality, we 
must add to the thought of His immanence the idea 
of His transcendence. He is not only within nature, 




THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S PRESENCE 63 



filling it with life and energy^ but He is above nature, 
as a personal Superintendent, if we may so speak, 
directing its workings. 

But just here comes the difficulty. As we grasp 
this latter idea more fully, instinctively we put God 
away from us. We think of Him as a Being far-off, 
in other regions than those we inhabit. We forget 
that God can never leave His world, that He cannot 
be banished from His creation, that He cannot have 
made the world and started it going and then left it 
to its own operation, with once in a while a special 
intervention on His part. We are so apt to get that 
notion of an absentee God against which a modern 
writer so vehemently protests, '^^the conception of a 
God sitting in the centre of the universe ruling things, 
as an imperial Caesar sits in Eome.^^ 

The thought, perhaps, may not be altogether 
clear; so suppose, in order to appreciate it, we put 
a question to ourselves. As a matter of fact, how are 
we accustomed to think about God? We feel His 
personal existence, let us hope, very deeply; but how 
do we think of this personal Being ? Do we think of 
Him oftenest as being with us, at our side, looking 
into our faces, or do we think of Him as being far 
away, entirely out of our reach ? Is it not a fact that 
from childhood we have been putting Him ever at a 
distance; kneeling to pray to Him, and yet somehow 
feeling that we must strive hard to make Him hear; 
picturing Him in heaven, ^^above the bright blue sky,^^ 
as the children's hymn puts it. One who hears, and 
yet somehow — we cannot explain it, but somehow — 



64 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



almost out of the sound of out voices^ almost out of 
reach? We pray^ and it seems necessary to lift the 
eyes and stretch out the hands and strain after God. 
Yes^ we know that He is a person, but He seems al- 
ways to be a distant person; He seems never to be 
here, He is always there, just beyond us, not with us, 
never leaning over us as the mother did at whose knee 
we bent in childhood, with her hand on the little 
one's head, and her face over him. This is the way 
we long to think about God ; we want to have a deeper 
sense of His nearness, we wish to realize His personal 
presence. 

Xow a moment's thought will convince us that de- 
vout meditation on the Incarnation can satisfy this 
longing for God. See how it was with the early dis- 
ciples. TVe are not to suppose that from the moment 
they saw Christ they understood His divine nature. 
At first He was to them only a very good man. VTe 
ourselves come into the presence of a man or woman 
of saintly character and at once we seem to be breath- 
ing a different air, there is a subtle something in the 
conversation and bearing of our friend that rests like 
a benediction upon us and God seems nearer. So 
it was that the disciples first knew Christ, we may 
suppose. Xot without reason do the painters picture 
Him with a halo about His head and a glory shining 
from His person. It was so, in a figure, that the dis- 
ciples saw Him from that first day when the Baptist 
pointed Him out to Andrew and John at the riverside. 

Then, as their intimacy with Him deepened, they 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S PRESENCE 65 



began to know Him as the Messiah and remembering 
all that had been told by the prophets of how God^s 
grace should be poured on the Anointed One they 
learned to think of Him as indeed bringing the Al- 
mighty very close to them. Yet later they knew Him 
as in some special sense the Son of God and the 
significance of the title grew upon them as He spoke 
to them from time to time of His union with the 
Father, of His equality with Him and of the necessity 
of a personal union with Himself in order to be knit 
up into the divine life. What it all meant they did 
not fully understand then, but as time went on He 
spoke more and more plainly and then, after the 
resurrection, they saw the meaning of His life, saw 
that in the presence of their Master they were in the 
very presence of God. 

So their faith grew. Mark how its gradual de- 
velopment prepared them to realize at the last God^s 
presence with them in Christ. They could not have 
understood or believed it at the first, but after all this 
training the truth came home to them now. They 
saw that when they had been speaking with Christ; 
when they had reverently touched His hand, when 
they had knelt at His feet, when they had told Him 
of their joys and sorrows, or asked His help, or 
offered Him their love, they had been walking and 
talking with God. That was why their hearts burned 
within them : they were in the divine presence, follow- 
ing God as His dear children. Once they had known 
Christ after the flesh, but now they knew Him so no 
more. They had gradually come to the revelation and 



66 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



so they could grasp it. They looked back upon the 
old life and realized its secret and knew now why the 
Master was to be called Emmanuel; truly, in a way 
far higher than they had dreamed, He was God 
with us. 

We note how this sense of the presence of God 
with them was deepened by the resurrection appear- 
ances. There seems to have been a plan followed in 
Christ's way of manifesting Himself. The disciples 
had been with Him and had known His presence in 
the flesh so long, that it was necessary that they 
should be prepared for the different presence that was 
to be vouchsafed them after the ascension. Before, 
they had known that He was with them because they 
had seen Him with their eyes and handled Him with 
their hands. Sometimes they were still given the 
opportunity to do that — for they must be assured of 
His bodily resurrection — ^but noAv He always came 
and went so mysteriously. One moment they were 
alone in the upper chamber and the next He came 
and stood in the midst. Again, they were fishing by 
the Sea of Galilee and they looked up to find Him 
standing on the shore. The disciples on the road to 
Emmaus met Him and then just as they recognized 
Him He vanished. TTas it not so, that the lesson 
might gradually be learned, the lesson we need to 
learn ourselves, that He was always with them, in 
their work, in their worship, at the social board; 
always with them, but unveiling His presence only 
now and then? Later came the ascension, when a 



THE INCARNATION AND GOD'S PRESENCE 67 



cloud received Him out of their sight; but they knew, 
after all that training, that He had not gone away; 
He was still present, though thereafter the veil was 
not to be lifted for them. All the Easter appearances 
had been given to make them understand this, that 
He was ever by their side, and had only to part the 
cloud and reveal Himself when He would. Now and 
then the veil was lifted, for St. Stephen, for St. 
Paul ; but for the most part there were to be no more 
visions ; indeed, they were so sure now of His presence 
that visions were no longer needed ; they knew, though 
they could not see. 

Christ is with us; and Christ is God, therefore 
God is with us. That is what the Incarnation meant 
in the apostolic days, and that is what it means now. 
If we do not feel it ; if as we gather together for wor- 
ship in His name there is no deepened sense of the 
nearness of Christ and the Father ; if there has been 
no catching of the breath, no glow at the heart, no 
reverent awe, no sacred sense of mystery, then we 
must turn back and seek to quicken our faith. What 
do we really believe about Christ? Are we sure that 
He is divine? If so, what He did of old He does 
now. If we pray to have our faith strengthened we 
too shall see and know and for us too God will come 
and speak and help and strengthen. 

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can 
meet; 

Closer is He than breathings and nearer than hands or feet. 



68 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



IX. 

SIN AND THE FALL 

THE existence of sin and evil in the world is pos- 
sibly the greatest mystery we are called upon to 
f ace^ and yet^ when we come to think of it^ the idea of 
a world of men and women altogether good and true, 
without the possibility of evil as a thing they had 
deliberately rejected, would be a much more dijSficult 
conception. For moral goodness implies virtue that 
comes from choice. 

Sometimes we hear people say that God might 
have made us good, and kept us good, that He might 
have created us so that there would be no possibility 
of our doing what is wrong. Could He have done 
that ? We can hardly see how. For then we should 
not be men and women at all; we should be mere 
machines and our goodness would be like the ^^good- 
ness^^ of a perfectly constructed watch or a delicately 
adjusted engine; it would have no moral element 
about it whatever, it would be mere mechanical good- 
ness. Instead of our being free agents, serving God 
because we would show Him a loving and grateful 
obedience, we should be wooden puppets, always 



SIN AND THE FALL 



69 



moving in the right direction, but doing so because 
we were put here or there and caused to do this or 
that, at the touch of a hand that moved the springs 
and wires. 

Take two boys who have been brought up in dif- 
ferent ways by equally virtuous and conscientious 
parents. Suppose that one of them has been so care- 
fully guarded from sin that he has not been allowed 
to think things out for himself. His father has al- 
ways told him just exactly what to read, what to see, 
what to speak, whom to meet, what to do. In the 
effort to prevent the boy from doing wrong he has 
kept away from him all knowledge of any but his 
own views and the son has grown up, therefore, in 
innocence. But he is not necessarily, on that account, 
a good man. His virtue is the virtue of ignorance. 
He does what his father has taught him, because there 
has never entered into his mind a conception of any- 
thing else. He has been so carefully guarded that he 
has practically no independent existence apart from 
that of the parent who has moulded and shaped him. 
Suppose it were possible for a father to train his son, 
strictly and absolutely, after this method — what sort 
of man would he grow up to be, do you suppose? 
Would you not think him a mere nonentity? You 
would realize that to have him stay good as long as he 
lived, he must never be separated from his father. 
The only hope of his remaining virtuous would lie in 
his remaining bound and restricted : the kind of good- 
ness that such a boy had would be utterly inconsistent 
with freedom. No father ever yet succeeded in train- 



70 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



ing a child precisely in this way; but we have often 
seen parents who have tried to, and just in measure 
as they have succeeded have they made the children 
of such training poor, weak creatures, with, little true 
moral strength or steadfast virtue/ 

Contrast such a training with that of a boy whose 
father has carefully inculcated in him the keenest 
sense of duty and the deepest principles of morality, 
but has sought to guide rather than force his thought. 
He has been constantly pointed to what is good and 
right and honorable, but he has been allowed to see 
the other side, too, warned of its perils, told of its 
hatefulness, but allowed to face it for himself and 
left to make his choice from right principles. Such 
a boy will probably do things that are wrong, but 
under the guidance of a good father he will ordinarily 
grow into a strong, sturdy, moral manhood. Sud- 
denly deprived of the father's guidance, he will not 
plunge into weak and sinful excesses but will face 
evil alone and gain now in moral power by the same 
strength that has become his in facing these very 
things before with the father^s help and guidance. 

Now we may reverently say that God, in training 
us His children, had to choose between these two 
methods — except that with Him either plan could 
have been carried to perfection. As was said before, 
however, the first method would never have produced 
a real humanity, it would have generated a race of 
"doll children^', so to speak. However perfectly evil 



^ See Latham, Pastor Pastorum, lecture ii. 



SIN AND THE FALL 



71 



might have been avoided^ the result would have been a 
wooden perfection. It could have been said, ^^These 
are good men, good women/^ but only in the sense in 
which we now speak of a "good^^ picture, or a ^^good^^ 
tool, or a ^^good'^ piece of workmanship. 

So it will be seen to some extent why evil exists in 
God^s world from the beginning, at least as a possi- 
bility of thought. God, when He made man, wished 
to create a being whose goodness would be a moral 
goodness, who would serve Him from choice, whose 
virtue of life would be a growth and development, not 
a finished creation. God, therefore, made man a free 
agent. The story of the Garden of Eden shows how 
the man so made was left to choose to serve his 
Creator. It is not necessary to insist that the narra- 
tive shall be read as literal prose fact. It need not 
be historical truth. It is embodied truth. Stripped 
of its imagery, the story tells us that man was placed 
in a condition of life in which all was good and fair ; 
that evil, however, was there in thought for him to 
contemplate, that he was to know it as a possibility, 
but not from actual experience. Left thus, our first 
forefather, at Satan^s temptation, fell. The pleasures 
of sin were placed before Eve, and she and Adam 
with her were lured into tasting evil. The tree of 
the knowledge of good and evil was there for them to 
look upon, for they must know of the possibility of 
evil or they could not be really good. They chose to 
know more than the possibility, they would know 
experimentally, and so they fell. But it was infinitely 



72 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



better that they should be in danger of falling than 
that they should be kept under God's perfect restraint 
and made to do right. It is the crowning glory of 
man, some one has said, that he can stand before his 
Creator and say, "I will not/' Had he contemplated 
his power and declared instead, ^^Lord, I will; help 
me and I will,'' the story of the race would have been 
a very different one; but had the choice never been 
given the narrative would never have been a human 
story at all. Men became evil when they used against 
God the power that was given them to use for Him. 

Perhaps some one will say that such an explana- 
tion as this implies that God is the author of imper- 
fection. ISTothing of the sort. God, when He had 
made man, could look upon His own creation, and 
"behold, it was very good." But this goodness was 
an undeveloped perfection; it was the perfection of 
a beautifully formed bud, not the perfection of the 
full-blown flower. God made the first man with the 
goodness of childhood, intending that this should de- 
velop into the stronger, deeper, richer goodness of 
full-grown age. 

It would not be honest, however, to pass over this 
aspect of the subject without squarely meeting one 
decided difficulty which the thought of the day forces 
upon us. It is constantly objected to the doctrine of 
the fall of man that if Adam's transgression means 
also the downfall of the race, the conception goes 
wholly against the evolutionary theory\ This theory 
— which is now generally accepted — tells us of a 



I 

I 



SIN AND THE FALL 73 

progressive development from inorganic matter to 
organic, from brute to man, and from primitive man 
to the race as we find it to-day. Now Christianity 
seems to run counter to all this with its "belief in a 
moral change for the worse, happening at a definite 
time, and yet affecting the whole human race/^ Is 
this theory of a moral degradation reasonable, we are 
asked, in view of the general fact of constant ad- 
vance? Is it not natural to suppose that man is in 
every way higher and better to-day than was his first 
forefather ? Was the fall a fall up instead of down ? 

We can only reply to this that science above every- 
thing else teaches us to be true to facts; and the 
presence of sin in the world, of a disorder and strug- 
gle in human nature which is unnatural, is something 
we must honestly face.^ No theory of evolution is 
complete which ignores the fact that while man is 
indeed developing and making progress, his progress 
is checked and impeded in one part, and that the very 
highest part, of his nature. However great his de- 
velopment has been, it is still a retarded development, 
slower than it might have been, less regular and less 
sure than God meant it to be. Sin seems to be the 
cause of this ; it only can account for the dark shadow 
which rests upon all human history and has held man 
back from his full development — and sin itself 
cannot be satisfactorily explained. It is the one 
irrational, lawless, meaningless thing in the whole 
universe. It is because he is true to facts, then, that a 



^The following paragraph is condensed from Aubrey 
Moore, Science and the Faith, 



74 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Christian evolutionist refuses to acquiesce in the easy 
optimism of those who see but one side of human de- 
velopment and ignore this great obstacle to the true 
progress of the race. No revelation is needed to show 
how deep and wide is the havoc which sin has wrought 
in the world. The very world agony through which 
we have passed is too awful a "reversion to type^^ to 
be regarded as merely a reversion. 

To go back again to our argument after this in- 
terruption, let us repeat : God made man good and 
then man lost his original goodness. He made man 
at harmony with Himself and man by his disobedi- 
ence broke that harmony, became separated from God 
and lost the grace which alone kept him true to him- 
self. We may illustrate what happened at the fall 
by saying that man, being made in the image of God, 
was intended to reflect God^s likeness, as our own 
features are reflected in the smooth surface of a pool 
of water. At the fall this reflected image was marred, 
rather than absolutely lost. We look at our faces as 
reflected in a mirror, and if we break the glass the 
reflection is hopelessly gone; we look into the pool 
and if by stirring up the water or disturbing its sur- 
face the image becomes broken or dulled we know 
that by and by it will be restored, when the water is 
smooth and clear again. So, when man fell, the im- 
age of God was lost, but not lost in such a way as to 
be destroyed beyond hope of restoration. 

One word, too, as to the fact that when Adam fell 
the whole race fell with him. Let it be emphasized 



SIN AND THE FALL 75 

again that it is not necessary to assert that the whole 
story of Genesis is bald, literal fact. It is a great 
epic which embodies a great truth. We are getting to 
realize more and more in our day the solidarity of 
mankind. No man can live to himself. Whatever 
he does must affect many others and his sins and his 
virtues alike inevitably influence many lives beyond 
his own. We need not be surprised, therefore, when 
we are told that in the infancy of the race all man- 
kind was to be found in embryo, as it were, and so all 
future generations were affected by the first sin. 

Original sin is this inherited taint in our nature, 
that marring and spoiling of our original purity that 
makes us prone to evil. Just as the child of the con- 
sumptive is born with a physical weakness that tends 
to the development of tuberculosis, so the child of the 
drunkard or of the thief, any child (for all have had 
ancestors with some sinful weakness) is born with a 
perverted nature, with a tendency to sin, which may 
be restrained and overcome in large measure, but 
which is there, nevertheless, and must be corrected. 
Man has fallen from God, and must be won back. 

And, thank God, he can be won back, can be 
helped back. ^^As in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive.^' The race fell because it was 
knit up into unity in Adam, its progenitor, and the 
race can be lifted up when it is united in Christ, its 
new head. We are confident that this world of ours, 
scarred with its battlefields, darkened with its igno- 
rance and vice, defiled with the unceasing impurities 



76 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



of men^ is yet crowned with a halo of lights bathed in 
an atmosphere of holiness^ for upon it stands the 
form of the Son of Man, and radiating from Him are 
streams of never-ceasing grace. Only through Jesus 
Christ can we know what God is. Only through 
Jesus Christ can we know also what man should be. 
Only through Jesus Christ is there hope that man 
may become what he was meant to be. 



THE ATONEMENT 



77 



X. 



THE ATONEMENT 



E have seen that man has a fallen nature. We 



VY are now to ask how that nature is to be restored 
in Christ. This brings us to the consideration^ first 
of all^ of the Christian doctrine of the Atonement. 
Hardly any article of the faith has been so distorted 
and caricatured as this, so it may be well at the very 
* start to ask what it really is. 

Briefly, the doctrine is this: That Christ died 
for our sins, giving His life a ransom for us; that 
by His death upon the cross He took away the sin 
of the world, and by our union with Him we are re- 
stored to the divine favor. "The death of the Lord 
Jesus,^^ Canon Liddon puts it, "paid the debt which 
man owed and which man of himself could not pay 
to the Justice and Sanctity of God. His obedience to 
the divine will took the form of expiation, and 
became a satisfaction for sin to the AU-Just.^^ 

It has been objected to this doctrine that since 
God made men what they are He cannot be in the 
position of demanding reparation for sins committed 
by them because of the weakness of His own creation. 




78 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Moreover^ we are told that to picture God seeking 
to punish men for their sins^ being turned from His 
wrathful purpose by the goodness of His Son^ and 
accepting the death of one person for the offenses of 
others — all this is to make God an unreasonable 
tyrant and a capricious judge, rather than a merciful 
and loving Father. 

To meet these objections, and to show how they 
caricature the doctrine of the Church, we must first 
go back and look at that which made the Atonement 
necessary — sin. We are all conscious of it. We know 
that we have sinned, and that our offense has not been 
against our own nature only, or even against our fel- 
low beings, but that most of all we have grieved and 
offended God. The psalmist wonderfully recognizes 
this when he thinks chiefly of God as the victim of 
his ill-doing, ^^^gainst Thee only have I sinned, and 
done this evil in Thy sight.^^ We have all sinned 
and all of us who have any true sorrow for sin realize 
that our wrong-doing has not merely degraded and 
injured ourselves, but is an offense against God, an 
offense, too, that makes us deserving of punishment : 
when we have sinned, we ought to pay the penalty of 
our sin. 

Jfor is this all. When we seriously think about it 
we know that it is utterly impossible for us to pay this 
penalty. Sin has made us displeasing to God and 
we are in no position to make Him an offering ; every 
fresh sin makes a new payment necessary and for 
the least of our offenses — and most of all, for the 
sum of them — nothing that we could offer would ever 



THE ATONEMENT 



79 



be an adequate recompense. Sin, too, has so dead- 
ened the conscience that it cannot even offer the satis- 
faction of complete penitence. How, then, shall our 
recovery be effected ? Shall God forgive us fully and 
freely, without exacting a penalty ? God can do that, 
of course, but He can hardly do it and be consistent 
with Himself. We must remember that God is not 
only good and loving, but just and holy; and His 
justice as well as His goodness must be satisfied. To 
allow sin to go unpunished would be to cast justice to 
the winds and put a weak sentimentality in its place. 
God is the Creator of moral responsibility; and 
^Vould He be faithful to Himself if, after having 
laid down these great principles of morality in the 
nature and conscience of man. He did not do homage 
to them by judging men according to these rules 
which He Himself has established ? ^ 

Nor would it be just to man to forgive in this 
loose, lax, free fashion. All true forgiveness must 
show sin for what it is. If I forgive my child for his 
offense, I must, for his sake as well as for the sake of 
truth and righteousness, forgive him in such a way as 
not to diminish or benumb his sense of guilt. I must 
not let my love and tenderness be such as to lead him 
into an easy-going, good-natured carelessness. The 
sin must not be made to appear less hateful or less 
painful than it really is. 

There are, then, these facts: Man has sinned. 
God is good and would forgive him. But God is also 



^ Godet : 'New Testament Studies, 



80 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



just and sin is hateful; and before God can freely 
forgive this must be made clear. The pardon must 
not be such as to obscure God^s holiness or palliate 
man^s sin^ and lest this should be the case some pen- 
alty from the guilty one must be exacted or acknowl- 
edged. Sinful man is incapable of making the needed 
satisfaction^ though it be but the penalty of true 
penitence. How^ then^ can both the goodness and the 
justice of God be satisfied ? 

Here comes the Christian answer: Jesus Christy 
by His perfect life here on earthy fulfilled all of God's 
law. He. then^ is fitted to make a sacrifice and pro- 
pitiation for sin. He makes the sacrifice for us. He 
became obedient to deaths even the death of the cross^ 
that He might save us^ who lay in darkness and the 
shadow of death. 

But how^ it may be asked^, can such an offering 
avail us? If God be perfectly just^ how can He be 
satisfied with one man's well-doing in propitiation for 
another's evil deeds ? 

There are two ways of answering these questions. 
The first lies in a right apprehension of the truth of 
the Incarnation. The Son of God^ when He came on 
earth, took to Himself not one single human life but 
human nature generally. It was manhood and not 
man that the Son took into union with Himself and 
so when He suffered on the cross He suffered not as 
a single human being but as the representative and 
head of the race, as one who had in Himself some- 
thing of the nature of eyerj member of the race. In 



THE ATONEMENT 



81 



one sense^ therefore, it may be said that all mankind 
suffered in Christ, and so that which owed the debt 
paid it. ^^Taking to Himself onr flesh," says Hooker, 
^^and by His Incarnation making it His own flesh. 
He had now of His own although from ns what to 
offer unto God for us." 

It does seem, however, that the other answer is 
the one which emphasizes more clearly our individual 
connection with the sacrifice of Calvary. This second 
view bids us remember that a sufficient satisfaction 
for sin is found in the offender's real penitence. God 
would not exact any other penalty, if that could be 
offered; He would let the penalty pass, if once the 
right to exact it were seen and acknowledged. From 
the first moment of the fall, man had failed to com- 
prehend, as God would have him see it, the awfulness 
of sin. If he could once be made to see that, if he 
could be brought to a humble and penitent acknowl- 
edgment of His position as under the condemnation 
of death, then God's justice would be appeased. As 
Godet puts it: "That which God desired was not 
the satisfaction of the demands of His justice by the 
effusion of torrents of blood; it was the revelation to 
the conscience of men of those demands which they 
had refused to recognize ; it was the willing acknowl- 
edgment of them by that conscience itself. And why 
was this ? Because herein lies the true restitution for 
wrong committed ; and herein, consequently, the true 
basis for the reestablishment of moral order when it 
has been disturbed. When the will which disturbed 
it has once convinced itself of having been in the 



62 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



wrong, and has passed sentence of death upon itself, 
then order has triumphed in the midst of the world 
of disorder. God can the more easily relax the de- 
mands of His justice, when the righteousness of those 
demands has been recognized by the transgressor/^ * 

We can see how Christ's sacrifice accomplishes 
this. Just as human forgiveness in its best forms 
is saved from being demoralizing when the forgiven 
child has been made to see the pain given by its fault 
to the forgiving parent, so we discover the awful 
analogue of this, when divine forgiveness comes in- 
deed freely, but comes by divine Love itself bearing, 
before our eyes, our sins or their results. Jesus 
Christ came into the world, He lived here the perfect 
life God has designed for men. He was absolutely 
without sin, and when He was put to death men saw 
the enormity of sin in all its horror. If sin did that, 
they must say, as they looked at the cross — if sin did 
that, or if sin be so hateful in God's sight as to make 
such a sacrifice necessary — then we begin to see what 
we deserve for our transgressions. ^^Come down from 
the cross, Thou Holy One of God," we can say, 
^^come down from the cross, it is I that should be 
there, not Thou." In the death of Christ, and in 
nothing else, we can see the awfulness of sin and can 
be brought to acknowledge the penalty that is its due ; 
there, and nowhere else, the pain and shame of sin 
are awakened ; there its full horror is at last realized ; 
there we are convinced of our own guilt, ^^pricked at 



^Godet: New Testament Studies, 



THE ATONEMENT 



83 



the heart^^ ; there, in the supreme moment of forgive- 
ness, we find that the forgiveness is made possible 
because now we see sin through the eyes of God. 

Since the Great War began to bum its lessons into 
men's souls, it has been easier to feel, even though one 
cannot understand, how the death of Christ forwarded 
God's purposes for mankind. The bulk of the suffer- 
ing of the war has been sacrificial and the law which 
was fulfilled in Christ's passion has been receiving a 
fresh fulfilment in the sufferings of millions of His 
brethren. One of the compensations of the war has 
been that its wealth of self -giving has shed upon life 
a new glory and given it a new meaning. Its awful 
cloud has been tinged with the silver lining of a 
splendid sacrifice and that sacrifice, like Christ's, has 
been a vicarious offering. Men have been giving of 
themselves, of all they possess and all they hold dear, 
simply for the sake of humanity. A distinguished 
professor of Oxford has told us how, day by day, he 
was haunted by the thought that men were dying for 
him ; young men, noble men, men whom he knew and 
loved were laying down their lives that he and others 
might be free. ^^It solemnizes me," he wrote, ^^and 
gives me a new insight into the mystery and glory of 
life." 

Ah, yes ! ^^A God indifferent to the cries of a 
world in distress can be to us no God at all. Unlike 
the serene and indifferent gods of the pagan world, 
the God of Christianity is a God who sympathizes 
with men. In all their affliction He is afflicted. He 



84 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



carries their woes on His infinite heart. In days when 
multitudes of hearts are sorely troubled, where shall 
we obtain relief? In the thought that the Eternal 
suffers with us. It is the inexorable demand of our 
heart that the God of the universe shall carry a cross ! 
Those young men who have died — not for themselves, 
but for others — were symbols of the suffering of Christ 
as they offered their vicarious sacrifice. They entered 
by their dying as a permanent force into the life of 
the world. They have made it easier for others to 
live. They have added a brightness to the skies which 
bend over their graves.^^ ^ 

All this is but man^s feeble thought about the 
Atonement. We must not forget that after all we 
cannot expect to understand very clearly its great 
mystery. "How, or in what particular way, Christ^s 
death was efficacious, there are not wanting people 
who have endeavored to explain but I do not find that 
Scripture explains it,^^' said Bishop Butler, and Bishop 
Alexander calls that sentence one of the wisest in all 
theolog}^ After all^ there is one thing only that we 
are certain of about the Atonement. Whatever else 
we know, whatever we guess at, whatever we doubt, 
this one thing is beyond cavil: the exceeding great 
love of the cross. It shows us, not an angry Father 
propitiated by a loving Son but Father and Son, to- 
gether, out of the infinite affection of an infinitely 
loving heart, cooperating in procuring man^s salva- 



' Jefferson: Old Truths and 'Sew Facts. 



THE ATONEMENT 



85 



tion. The Son gladly comes to save; the Father as 
gladly sends Him. The cross is, for both, the out- 
pouring of love immeasurable. In its presence we 
bow in adoration and worship ; for its blessing we lift 
up the voice of praise and thanksgiving. Once we 
have felt its power, we can hardly lose faith or hope or 
grateful affection. Its message rings down the ages, 
and it is a message that tells us ever the same story : 
^^God so loved the world that He gave His only- 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish but have everlasting life.'' ^^Herein is love, 
not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent 
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.'' 



86 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XI. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE LIFE-GIVER 

'E should have a very one-sided view of the 



YV Atonement^ were we to regard it simply as the 
work of Jesus Christ for us. There is also a work to 
be done in us. 

The author of this work is God the Holy Ghost. 
He is the Other Advocate sent from the Father by 
the Son^ to take Christ's place with His people and to 
finish our redemption. In succeeding chapters^ which 
will treat of the Church and the sacramental system, 
we shall see how God the Holy Ghost works within 
us, sanctifying us and fitting us for the heavenly life. 
Here we shall first try to learn something of His 
person and office. 

To understand this, we go direct to the Holy of 
Holies, the inmost sanctuary of Holy Scripture, our 
Lord's beautiful and tender address to His apostles 
on the night before He suffered. On this occasion 
Jesus spake plainly and fully of the Holy Spirit. 
Heretofore there had been many references in His 
teaching to the Third Person of the adorable Trinity 
and such references had gradually become more and 




THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE LIFE-GIVER 87 



more clear^ but here we reach the very heart of our 
Lord's teaching about the Spirit. He is spoken of as 
the other Comforter^ who was to take Christ's place 
and abide with His disciples forever. Though un- 
known to the world;, He was already known to the 
apostles, for He was with them and one day would be 
in them. He would not only teach them all things, 
but would remind them of all that Jesus had taught. 
He, the Spirit of truth proceeding from the Father, 
would be sent to them by the Son and so full of bless- 
ing would His advent be that it would be better for 
them to be without Christ's visible presence than to 
be without the presence of the Holy Ghost. Through 
Him the world would realize its sinfulness and its 
need ; through Him it would learn what righteousness 
is and would have a sense of coming judgment; 
through Him the disciples would be guided into all 
truth; through Him the Son of Man would be 
glorified.^ 

So far as they were then able to enter into this 
teaching the apostles must have learned that the place 
of Jesus Christ would be supplied by an invisible 
Person, whose teaching would be entirely concerned 
with one subject, Jesus Christ, and whose mission 
would be to make the world understand and know 
Him. 

As these were the last words spoken by our Lord 
to His Church before He suffered, so the first words 
after His resurrection were concerned with the same 



^ See especially St. John xiv. 16-17; xiv. 26; xv. 26; xvi. 
7, 9-11, 13-14. 



88 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



subject. On Easter Day He gave the apostles the 
gift He had promised^ by breathing on them^ explain- 
ing His action by the words^ ^^Eeceive ye the Holy 
Ghost/^ The Holy Spirit now took possession of the 
Church of God^ indwelling it and so enabling it to 
exercise the power of loosing from sin, a gift which 
it was soon dispatched into the world to minister 
through baptism into the Triune JTame. 

We pass now to the teaching of the apostles. It 
was doubtless difficult for them to realize the person- 
ality of One whom they had not seen and could not 
see. They were brought to this realization, therefore, 
by the complete manifestation of the presence of the 
Spirit given them on the Day of Pentecost, when in 
fulfilment of our Lord's promise a sound of a rush- 
ing mighty wind was heard and filled the whole house 
where they were sitting, the sight of a sheet of flame 
divided into tongues was seen, and an intense spiritual 
exhilaration and enthusiasm possessed the apostles. 
Some time after, when the disciples had undergone 
persecution, a similar manifestation occurred, the 
house where they were assembled being shaken and 
their feelings again strangely elevated, so that they 
were able to speak the word with all boldness. 

It was now increasingly felt that the Holy Ghost 
dwelt in the whole body of the faithful. To attempt 
to deceive the Church, as did Ananias and his wife, 
was to try to deceive the Holy Ghost. To resist the 
doctrine of the Church was to resist the Holy Ghost. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE LIFE-GIVER 



89 



The word of the Church was the word of the Spirit."" 
Further, it was believed that the Holy Spirit was 
ordinarily given by the laying on of hands, though 
He was not tied to this means. Any divine inspira- 
tion was felt to be His. The intuitive feeling to set 
aside Barnabas and Saul for their work was felt to be 
a movement from the Holy Ghost, and the two went 
upon their mission with the conviction that they were 
sent by Him. St. Philip is moved by the Holy Ghost 
to take a particular road and join the chariot of the 
eunuch; St. Paul is forbidden by the same divine 
Person to extend his work into Asia; he is warned, 
also, by the Spirit of what would happen to him in 
J erusalem. 

Prom such facts it is clear what our Lord meant 
by saying to His followers that He would give them 
another Comforter. The Holy Ghost is here seen to 
be taking the place of the Lord Christ. He is to the 
Church of the Acts what Christ was to the first dis- 
ciples. He gives comfort, joy, courage, advice, and 
warning, and He does all as the Spirit of Jesus. 

In the Epistles we find doctrinally what the Book 
of the Acts tells us historically. St. Paul speaks of 
the assistance which the Holy Ghost renders us in our 
spiritual life in helping our prayers, of the assurance 
of sonship which He gives, of the knowledge of God 
which He imparts, of His indwelling us, so that our 
bodies become His temple, of the various gifts He 



^ See Acts v. 3-4; Acts vii. 51 compared with ix. 31; Acta 
XV. 28. 



90 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



ministers to us, of the danger of grieving Him. In 
the Epistle to the Hebrews the Old Testament is said 
to be the voice of the Holy Spirit; while St. James 
speaks of His longing to make ns His own^ St. Jude 
of His being the power in which we pray, St. Peter 
of His moving holy men of old in their scriptural 
messages and of His power in stirring np the prophets 
to search into the deeper meaning of their own dark 
sayings. Finally, St. John speaks of the message of 
the Spirit to the seven churches, of His confirmation 
of the voice from heaven, of His communion with the 
Church, and of His s}Tiibolic manifestation as the 
seven spirits seen before the throne in the vision on 
Patmos.^ 

It is a modern tendency to regard the revelation 
of the Spirit as impersonal. Language is used which 
would imply that the Holy Ghost is a divine mode or 
faculty or influence. Nothing could be further from 
the truth. The Holy Ghost is not only divine. He is 
a divine Person. 

(1) He is divine. This is so plain in Scripture 
that he who runs may read. There is little use to 
do more than touch on the evidence of the fact. ^Ye 
know that He is God because divine attributes are 
ascribed to Him. He is eternal (Hebrews ix. 14), 
omniscient (I Cor. ii. 10), omnipotent (St. Luke 
i. 35), omnipresent (Psalm cxxxix. 1), all sovereign 

' See Acts viii. 16; ix. 17 ; xix. 6; xiii. 2; xiii. 4; viii. 29; 
xvi. 6-7; Romans viii. 26; viii. 14, 16; I Cor. ii. 9; iii. 16; 
vi. 19; xii. 11; Eph. iv. 30; I St. Timothy iv. 1; Hebrews iii. 
7 and ix. 8; St. James iv. 5; I St. Peter i, 11, etc. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE LIFE-GIVER 



91 



(I Cor. xii. 11). Failure to recognize Him is failure 
to recognize God (Acts v. 4; I Cor. iii. 16) ; blas- 
phemy against Him is worse than blasphemy against 
the Son (St. Matthew xii. 31-32) ; to lie to Him is 
to lie to God (Acts v. 4) ; our bodies^ because they are 
the temple of the Holy Spirit, are the temple of God 
(I Cor. vi. 19 and II Cor. vi. 6). Plainest of all, as 
showing His divinity, is the fact that in the baptismal 
formula and the apostolic benediction divine homage 
is rendered to Him as to the Father and the Son. 

(2) He is not only divine, He is a divine Person. 
The central and decisive passage of Scripture, the 
address at the Last Supper, is sufficient proof of this. 
^There we have the Holy Ghost revealed to us in so 
many words as Him, not only as It ; as the living and 
conscious Exerciser of true personal will and love. 
And this central passage radiates out its glory upon 
the whole system and circle of Scripture truth about 
the Spirit.^' * 

The Holy Ghost is not a mere abstraction: else 
how should we be told of His personal acts, that He 
^^maketh intercession for us'^, that He is the true 
author of our ^^diversities of gifts", ^^dividing to every 
man severally as He will", that He may be sinned 
against, that such sin ^^grieves" Him ? How could it 
be said of an impersonal influence that it was sinned 
against, or grieved ? When our Lord says, "The Holy 
Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name, He 
will guide you into all truth," we have clearly set 



*Moule: Veni Creator, 



92 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



forth in that one short sentence the distinct person- 
slity of each of the members of the Triune Godhead. 

This Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life. 
The first chapters of the Bible show Him to us as the 
giver of physical life^ moving upon the face of the 
waters and bringing order out of chaos and renewing 
again the earth after the flood. Xo less is He giver 
of intellectual life^ sending skill and understanding 
to the architects of the tabernacle^ supplying the wis- 
dom of MoseS;, moving and inspiring the prophets. 

So^ too, He is the author of the new creation, the 
giver of spiritual life. It is by His overshadowing of 
the Blessed Virgin that a new point of departure is 
inaugurated in the Incarnation. He it is, also, who 
brings about the new birth in man. AVe are ^TDorn 
again by water and the Holy Ghost*^; we are saved 
through ^^the washing of regeneration and renewing 
of the Holy Ghost'^; we are washed, sanctified, "^'in 
the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of our 
God.^^ ^^By one Spirit are we all baptized into one 
body,^^ and ^^the love of God is shed abroad in our 
hearts by the Holy Ghost." ^^As many as are led by 
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "And 
because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit 
of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father." 

The Holy Ghost it is, then, who imparts the spark 
of the new spiritual fire within us; He quickens and 
re-kindles it by His grace; He inspires us with holy 
desires, and when we sin renews us to repentance; 
in a word. He "sanctifieth us and all the people of 



THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE LIFE-GIVER 



93 



Qod" To Him^ then, we owe peculiar love and 
adoration as the Lord and the Life-Giver. May it be 
our constant prayer not to resist His gracious influ- 
ence, lest by our indifference and neglect we "grieve^^ 
and ^^quench^^ the Spirit, and drive Him away as He 
comes to make our bodies His temple, the dwelling 
place of His glory. 



94 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XIL 

THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 

EAYEE is bringing God and the soul together 



1 and leaving them alone. I like that definition 
better than any other. Prayer is the effort of the 
human spirit to have conscious companionship with 
the Divine Spirit. For that reason prayer is the most 
difficult thing in the world. 

It is not an easy matter to know any one. With 
how many persons are you intimately acquainted? 
It is only now and then^ after long friendship and 
close association and under the impulse of respect or 
admiration or love^ that we go beyond the partial 
manifestations of character to the personality behind 
them. Prayer is the effort to know God. Private 
prayer means trying to know Him well enough to 
speak to Him simply and naturally. Of course that 
could not be easy. 

What makes prayer still more difficult is that God 
is invisible. It is so hard to appreciate the actuality 
of the unseen. 

There are steps by which we may approach to 




THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 



95 



certainty of God^s unseen presence. We can hardly 
look about us without feeling that there must be some 
unseen energy or activity behind the visible creation. 
That may be impersonal energy, of course, but we 
can hardly think so, if we try to reason about it in 
exactly the way we reason about human activity. 
All that you see of a man is the outward part of him, 
but his actions tell of a personal spirit within, the 
source and spring of his outward activity and power. 
You see his body, but you cannot see the man himself, 
the inner spirit. One makes the leap from nature to 
God just as one moves naturally and inevitably from 
the thought of human activity to the thought of 
human personality. God is behind and within and 
all through nature as the spirit is within the body. 
God is not simply an impersonal influence, nor is God 
identical with His world. He is the Soul of things. 

It is a fatal defect of modern religious thought 
that it tends to regard the Holy Spirit as a divine in- 
fluence or a divine mode or faculty. We have many 
prayers addressed to the Father or to the Son, but all 
too seldom a prayer addressed to the Spirit. Yet the 
simplest way to begin to pray is to think, and think 
hard, of God as Spirit and of the Holy Spirit as the 
living and conscious Exerciser of personal will and 
power and love. 

Breathe on me^ Breath of God, 

Till I am wholly Thine, 
Till all this earthly part of me 

Glows with Thy fire divine. 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Breathe on me, Breath of God, 

Fill me with life anew; 
That I may love what Thou dost love 

And do what Thou wouldst do. 

Breathe on me, Breath of God, 

Until my heart is pure. 
Until with Thee I will one will 

To do or to endure. 

Breathe on me. Breath of God, 

So shall I never die; 
But live with Thee the perfect love 

Of Thine Eternity. 

Prayer^ tlien^ is intercourse with the unseen God. 
It is not petition only^ though petition is a part of 
prayer. It need not follow any fixed form^ though 
form may be evidence of reverent thought. It need 
not even be speech with God — we can pray without 
words. It is the establishing of personal relationship 
with the Divine Companion. 

There are difficulties innumerable once we begin 
to discuss the efficacy of prayer. Why should God 
make His gifts depend upon our petitions ? What is 
the real relation between prayer and human effort? 
How can prayer be reconciled with the reign of law? 
How can our prayers help anybody but ourselves? 
What about the seemingly unanswered prayers of good 
people ? Elsewhere I have tried to face some of these 
difficulties frankly and honestly. I am obliged now 
to make choice between going again into the whole 
question of the reasonableness of prayer and simply 
dealing practically with prayer as a habit and I choose 



THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 97 



the latter course and refer my readers to other books 
for the apologetic side of the subject/ 

Eemember that the heart and soul of the Christian 
religion is the belief that God was once revealed in 
Christy a divine Person who manifested Himself to 
men and before He disappeared from sight pledged 
His continued presence with them, a presence unseen 
but no less real than was His presence while He was 
here on earth. Eemember that the early disciples who 
had seen Him in the days of His flesh were so certain 
of His continued presence in succeeding days that 
nothing could shake their faith. Before you begin to 
pray, think of this revelation in Christ — ^think until 
He becomes real for you. In other words, get abso- 
lutely alone and practise the presence of God. 

All this is difficult, of course. Did we not say 
that prayer is the most difficult thing in the world? 
But it is worth while making every possible effort; 
for without prayer other means of grace are hindered 
in their operation. Prayer, some one has said, breaks 
up the ground of the soul, so that the Sower can sow 
the seed of His own personality in it. Difficult? 
Yes, to be sure. It means spending some time with 
God, a long time if need be. It takes a long time to 
get close enough to any friend to be able to understand 

^ See chapter ix. of my book, The Experiment of Faith; 
also chapter vii. of Back to Christ, Any one who wishes to 
go into the matter deeply and thoroughly should read a 
collection of essays by English Churchmen, entitled Con- 
cerning Prai/er, See also, Slattery: Why Men Pray, and 
some practical books on Prayer by Carey, Fosdick, McComb, 
and others. 



96 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



him and absorb his strength. It takes a long time to 
get close enough to God to have Him change the whole 
tone and temper of our lives. If you cannot pray 
long^ break up your prayers into short petitions and 
say each of them ^ith the greatest care and earnest- 
ness. Do not expect that God will hear you^ if you 
yourself do not attend. Shut out earthly thoughts 
and try hard to think His thoughts. "Show Thou 
me the way that I should walk in^ for I lift up my 
soul unto Thee.^^ 

Failure in prayer is due also to the fact that most 
people have never been taught how to pray. We have 
been told that we must speak to God^ but we have 
never been told how to speak with Him. Indeed^ it 
is not easy to tell some one else how you do a thing, 
because what helps one man may not help another. 
Suppose we start with some such method as this : 

We begin by recollecting God^s presence and then 
start with confession : 

God, I am kneeling here in Your presence. I want You to 
look at me and tell me just what You think of me. Help 
me to think out these thoughts after You. Show me my 
weaknesses,, my shortcomings, my inconsistencies. Show me 
the things about myself of which You most disapprove, the 
sins that are a lawless disregard of Your wishes and pur- 
poses for me and an offense against the ordered harmony of 
Your world. 

That is confession. Then go on to adoration : 

God, show me what You are. Help me to think quietly 
and seriously until I get a clear idea of what You must be, 
in Your purity and holiness, Your power, Your justice, Your 



THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 



99 



stern hatred of evil, Your pity, Your love. Help me to 
understand the strength and splendor of an All-Holy Being 
who is all that the best of men and women are and a million 
times more besides. Help me to be very still now while T 
think about You. 

That is adoration. 

Now begin to tell God what you know about your- 
self ; what you would like to be^ what you ought to do. 
Ask Him to help you to be what He would have you. 

Then tell Him of the things you want, things you 
actually need for your health, comfort, peace, and 
happiness. Ask Him to give them to you, if He too 
thinks they are good for you to have. 

Don't forget to thank Him for all He has given 
you. Think about your health, your friends, your 
natural blessings, your special advantages, your 
social blessings, your talents and opportunities and 
responsibilities. 

Then bring to Him the needs of others, your 
family and the friends who make your life worth 
living. When you have done this, ask Him to enlarge 
the circle of your interests and tell Him about the 
needs of the community, the Church, the nation, the 
world. Bring to Him, in such a way as to show how 
keenly and deeply you feel it, the world's sorrow and 
the world's sin. 

Ask Him to show others their need of Him, as He 
has shown you your need. Ask Him to make them 
ashamed of their sin and neglect of Him. Ask Him 
to make them conscious of His goodness and His 
power. Ask Him to help men everywhere to serve 



100 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 

Him faithfully until His will be done on earth as it 
is in heaven and His purpose for men be everywhere 
accomplished. 

Then ask God to show you how you can work for 
the accomplishment of some of the things you have 
asked Him to do and resolve that what you are clearly 
shown you will start at once to do. 

Before you close, take another moment for rec- 
ollection of His presence and then tell Him again 
that you realize your unworthiness, and that you take 
courage to speak to Him because you believe in Jesus 
Christ and all for which He stood, and are trying to 
ask only what you believe Jesus Christ would like to 
have you ask and be willing that you should work for. 
Tell Him that you know you are not worthy to offer 
any petition unless it be offered in union with His 
sacrifice. Eemember that whether you understand 
prayer or not, you pray because Christ prayed. I 
think He knew. 

I do not know whether this is the way in which 
you will learn to pray. I only know that it is the 
way in which I learned. I suppose, too, that for many 
people it will seem a rather large programme. Do as 
much of it as you can. Try out a little bit of it at a 
time. In the end you will not find the whole pro- 
gramme quite as formidable as it looks. At any rat^, 
the plan will suggest several things about prayer which 
we need to remember if our prayers are to have any 
reality. 

First, it shows us that essentially prayer is inter- 



THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 101 



course with a divine Person. Sometimes the religion 
of Jesns Christ seems hard to grasp because it is so 
profound^ but really it is easy to grasp because it is so 
absolutely human. We ourselves are persons and we 
know that our hearts are always feeding on the hearts 
of other men. Your character is that on which an- 
other man draws^ consciously or unconsciously. ^^A 
man's courage, a man's insight, a man's experience, a 
man's form of character, these things flow down to 
weaker souls as surely as water flows down from a 
height above." There are men in whose presence we 
cannot be weak or cowardly, just because character 
cannot be confined and personality cannot be pressed 
within close limits. The mind gets its power as the 
body gets its strength, from what it feeds on; and 
such men are always feeding other men. The wonder- 
ful thing about God's personality is that it, too, is 
outflowing. The pity is, that we have dammed up 
the channels through which the stream of His life 
flows into ours. 

The method of prayer recommended suggests also 
that God often answers prayer through human agents 
and in human work. The skill and understanding of 
the physician; the new health laws which medical 
science is constantly discovering ; above all, the deeper 
sympathy with the world's pain and the quickened 
desire to help which have lightened to such an extent 
the world's burden — who knows what part prayer has 
had in all this? The spirit of social service which 
has brought light into so many dark places and made 
human life so much less unendurable — who can say 



102 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



how much prayer had to do with the enlightenment? 
The new sense of corporate responsibility^ with its 
education towards a better industrial order — has 
prayer had nothing to do with opening our eyes there ? 
There is indeed an ^^intercession which is cooperation 
with God/' and God has been showing us many things 
of late of which the world has long been ignorant. 
The growth of the social spirit as a late fruit of Chris- 
tianity may ^^make possible the rebirth of a Christian 
community which can become the strongest force in 
the world/^ and prayer pointed out the path of 
progress/ 

Xext : the condition of prayer is that it shall be in 
Christ's name. '^^^\Tiatsoever ye shall ask the Father 
in My name^ He will give it you/' is His promise. 
Our intentions and desires should be in harmony with 
that revelation which His life gives. The condition 
that He requires is not fulfilled merely by adding a 
formal mention of His mediation^ "Through Jesus 
Christ our Lord/' at the conclusion of our petitions. 
We are bound to enter into union with Him and "let 
this mind be in [us] which was also in Christ Jesus." 
This implies real repentance^ an honest purpose of 
amendment of lif e^ and a steadfast desire and effort to 
be like Him. 

Praying in His name also means that the soul 
approaches God through the merits of Jesus Christ. 
One of the English chaplains urges the use of an 
ancient and popular method of prayer long since for- 



^ Concerning Prayer : Its Nature, Its DifficiUties, and 
Its Value. 



THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 103 



gotten among us^ which he found most helpful in 
teaching his men the power of Christ^ s mediation. 
By it each great event in onr Lord^s life is taken 
separately and in order and pleaded before Him: 

By Thy Holy Nativity in Bethlehem, save us and help 
us, O Lord. 

By Thy Baptism in the River Jordan, save us and help 
us, O Lord. 

By Thy Fasting and Temptation, save us and help us, 
O Lord. 

By Thine Agony on the Cross, save us and help us, 
Lord. 

By Thy Precious Death and Burial, save us and help us, 
Lord. 

By Thy Glorious Resurrection and Ascension, save us 
and help us, Lord. 

By Thy Pleading for us in Heaven, save us and help us, 
Lord. 

People in these days are just as unaccustomed to 
original devotion and just as discouraged in attempt- 
ing longer prayers as were people in the ^^ages of 
ignorance^'. How many who have read this chapter 
have felt that the programme already laid down is im- 
possible for them? A simple devotion like this^ 
therefore^ which all can remember, ought to be help- 
ful. It can be used anjnvhere or at any time. It 
embodies the chief events in our Lord's life and as 
they are meditated upon even in this simple way they 
come to have new meaning in the hearts of those who 
use the intercession. ^^Men have told me/' says the 
chaplain, ^^that they have used it even during a charge. 
Men who wanted to pray and did not know how, have 
found this something which they can enter into and 



104 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



understand and never outgrow. It creates an atmos- 
phere of religion vigorous enough to withstand the 
spiritually depressing atmosphere of the world. It 
keeps boys from forgetting the religious instruction 
they received in school. In the hospital one day I 
found a man using the ^chaplet\ He was full of it ! 
It had made him wish to be confirmed and become a 
communicant. In fact, it had changed his whole 
religious outlook, which before he used the ^chaplet^ 
had been purely f ormal.^^ ^ 

Unquestionably we have often made the mistake 
of expecting too much of people. We expect every- 
body to be an advanced and proficient Christian. We 
think we ought to be such ourselves. If we find this 
beyond us, it does not occur to us that at least we can 
be simple Christians and carry over into manhood a 
little of our childhood faith. 

We shall learn to pray better in private, if we 
practise public prayer more faithfully. Actually, 
whatever we may say about the need of church going, 
we find that when people neglect public worship 
sooner or later their practice of religion declines. 
Most of all, is there need of using the service of Holy 
Communion for intercession. Celebrations should be 
frequent enough to train worshippers in devotion. I 
am inclined to believe that many of the men who 
come back from Prance will bring back with them a 
new appreciation of the power of eucharistic worship 



' The Church m the Furnace. 



THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 105 



and some of the clergy at least will have quite a differ- 
ent attitude as to the value of eucharistic adoration 
and the use of the reserved sacrament as a help to 
devotion. They will have seen the women in France, 
^^kneeling before some dimly lighted altar, their lips 
moving in devoted entreaty to the Holy Presence they 
believe to be there before them^^, and they will be a 
little chary of declaring emphatically that the custom 
is altogether wrong when it makes a sanctuary out of 
a dead building and a place of perpetual prayer out 
of an auditorium for weekly preaching. 

Our Lord teaches us the value of united prayer. 
It is stamped with His approval, blessed with His 
gracious promise. Our religion is social. We are 
not just so many souls to be saved individually, we 
are members of a divine society; even before that, 
children of a common Pather^s family. The Lord^s 
prayer begins, ^^Our Father'^, not ^^My Father'\ 

It is not through formal public worship only that 
we receive the blessings of united prayer. One sees 
sometimes in the churches of Europe groups of people 
saying their prayers aloud without any priest to lead 
their devotions and one wonders why there should not 
be many bands of faithful Church people in our own 
parishes meeting together in the same way to plead 
for special objects. Corporate communions will be 
especially useful in training our people in united 
devotion. 

But vocal prayer even is not necessary. I do not 
know when I have been so vividly impressed by that 



106 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



fact as when at the weekly meetings of the Eotary 
Clubs during the last year of the war I have seen 
large groups of men. at the stroke of a bell, stand for 
a minute in silent petition that God would guide the 
nation and its president, make us worthy of yictory, 
and give speedy success to our annies and those of our 
allies. 

A Church of England clerg^Tuan has written of a 
profoundly moving experience he had while conduct- 
ing a mission in Xew Zealand before the war. In 
the parish where he was preaching, a group of Quakers 
of the finest type had asked pennission to use the 
vestry of the church for their weekly '"silent meeting'\ 
Soon some of the people of the parish joined them 
and after a time the meeting migrated to the church 
itself. It supplied a felt want. It became an in- 
stitution. The missioner thus describes it : * 

^'TTe knelt without a word. There was no sound 
of vocal prayer, no leader. I cannot put into words 
what happened, but some aspects of the experience I 
must try to express. First, there came very quietly 
the sense of a Presence. The work of prayer became 
stranofelv easv. We were not resolutelv fixinof our 
thoughts upon a Friend in a far country, but were 
listening to One who was there in the church— speak- 
ing. The still air seemed to vibrate with this 
Presence that could be felt. God was speaking to us, 
not in words or voices but in that speech which does 
not need to be uttered. Yet if I may say so bold a 



* Cyril Hepher: The FelloicsJiip of Silence. 



THE PRACTICE OF PRAYER 107 



thing it was not what He said that mattered so much 
as that He was there and we were with Him. That 
was enough. Then^ again^ one perception that grew 
as the minutes slipped by unnoticed w^as the sense of 
fellowship. We in that church were no longer iso- 
lated individuals. It was unquestionably a corporate 
act in which we were engaged^ or rather a corporate 
experience that had come to us. We found that the 
freest guiding of God and the fullest spiritual ex- 
perience is given through human fellowship. More 
use of silence in public worship would surely lift us 
to a higher spiritual level.^^ 

In every way in which we have thought of it^, then, 
prayer is hard work. To amount to anything it must 
mean real effort. It cannot be casual or perfunctory. 
We have to take time and shut the world out and learn 
to concentrate the mind on God and subdue our im- 
patience and fill ourselves with the spirit of obedience, 
until we can think temperately and accurately, judge 
calmly, and become masters of ourselves and loyal 
servants of Him whose will we would accomplish. 
Let the man who desires stronger faith in prayer pray 
seriously — act and act and act again — and soon he 
will be absolutely sure of its value. Especially let 
him examine himself for sin (of this we shall treat 
later) for so he will discover his need of God — and 
this need will bring him to his knees. 



108 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XIII. 

CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 

STEIKING feature of modern Christianity is 



/v the absence of any corporate conception of relig- 
ion. Thousands of people think it quite enough to be 
an ^^unattached^^ follower of Christ. Church attend- 
ance is irregular; Church membership is considered 
unnecessary^ This does not necessarily mean relig- 
ious indifference ; on the contrary, there is more ^^dif- 
fused Christianit}^^^ than ever before, a more general 
desire to be of use in the world. But, unquestionably, 
along with this, is a growing neglect of religious insti- 
tutions. Christianity has become ^^a mere amorphous 
aggregate of individual souls^\ There is an utter 
absence of any corporate idea of religion. 

Even among Church members we find a failure 
to understand that Christianity is necessarily some- 
thing larger than individualism. Personal religion 
there must be, of course. One by one we must surren- 
der to Christ; one by one place ourselves under His 
influence. He "saved me and gave Himself for me'' 
and I must accept Him as my Saviour and Lord. All 
that, surely. But Christianity, as we read it, is more 




CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 109 



than that. When, one by one, we have come to Christ, 
we are not to be left loose and unattached. If we 
read the gospel story aright, individual fellowship is 
safeguarded as it becomes merged in corporate fellow- 
ship. The religion of Christ is to be embodied in a 
society — ^the Church which is His body — and that 
society, one and undivided, is to go out into the world 
conquering and to conquer. 

There was a time when men hardly dreamed of 
being religious without belonging to some Christian 
organization. They might be irreligious and careless 
and make no professions of Christianity, but they 
did not for a moment imagine that they could be 
anything other than irreligious and yet hold aloof 
from all organized Christianity ; if they were believers 
they must profess some creed and belong to some 
Church. Now, however, we find an increasing num- 
ber of men and women, of moral and upright life, 
professing and calling themselves Christians, and yet 
identified with no Church, asserting their admiration 
for Christ, even their love and devotion for Him, 
perhaps claiming to be in sympathy with His 
ideals, or it may be with the aims of His Church, 
even attending occasionally on the services of some 
religious body, and yet identifying themselves with 
no Christian communion and holding back from any 
open Church membership. 

You speak to them about their anomalous posi- 
tion, and they give various reasons for their failure 
to join a Church. Perhaps it is that "they do not 
feel that they are good enough perhaps they cannot 



110 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



altogether agree with the doctrines of any one body; 
or^ they think "there are too many hypocrites in the 
churches already*'; or^ they cannot see the necessity 
of "joining the Church^^, they can be followers of 
Christ without it. They think of Christ as a great 
moral teacher, a sinless moral example, and they 
can try to follow Him, without belonging to any 
organization. 

Indeed, we shall find with many that there is an 
inherent dislike of the very thought of organized 
Christianity. They love to picture our Lord as One 
who went about doing good. Crowds of the poor 
flock to Him for comfort and help, multitudes of the 
sick press upon Him to be healed, the distressed and 
heavy laden come to Him for relief, and He receives 
them all so sweetly and tenderly and graciously ! 
The publicans even, and the notorious sinners, are 
not turned away. He has time for the little children, 
and rebukes those who think that He is too busy to be 
troubled by their demands upon His time. 

He speaks so lovingly to them all, too. So simply 
and beautifully does He explain spiritual things, 
that men cannot but be drawn to Him, cannot but 
wish to follow Him, cannot but long to be like Him, 
cannot but love Him. So we would wish to love Him 
now, some say; so we want our religion brought to 
us ; so we would have the Gospel in its primitive pur- 
ity and sweet simplicity. The moment we try to 
organize all this into a system, the moment you ask us 
to accept a creed and to tie ourselves to ordinances, 
that moment the charm of the picture is gone. 



CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 



111 



Well^ that picture in all its beauty is quite true. 
But it is not the only picture of our Lord^s life that 
the Gospels give us. Our Saviour was all this — sweet 
and tender and gracious, calling men to Himself and 
never turning any away, pitiful toward their infirmi- 
ties and merciful in their sin, drawing them to Him 
with cords of love. But there is another side of His 
life, a deeper purpose, an inner motive. There is the 
real object of His coming, which was revealed at first 
only to the inner circle of His disciples, and to them 
little by little. He came to suffer and to die, and to 
do all this not merely that men might be drawn to 
Him as individuals, but that they might be organized 
and knit together in a body, through the power of 
His risen life — He came as the Son of God to establish 
a kingdom.^ 

His kingdom ! The word is ever on His lips : "It 
is the Father^s good pleasure to give you the king- 
dom^^ ; "I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father 
hath appointed unto Me.^^ He is at the pains to 
explain by parables that occupy a large part of His 
time of teaching what that kingdom is, how it is to be 
started, how it will grow, who will be its subjects, 
what will be its characteristics. 

And this kingdom, we find by and by, is con- 
nected with the Church. As we read what the Master 
says of His kingdom, the thought seems to point 
sometimes to an organization, sometimes to the rule 
of Christ in the heart. I^ow He says to one who 



^ See H. S. Holland: Creed and Character, 



112 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



comes to Him^ "Thou art not far from the kingdom 
of heaven'^ ; again the other side is emphasized, when 
He speaks of this kingdom as a net, or a field of 
grain, a gathering of souls, some worthy and some 
unworthy. Soon he begins, too, to speak of His 
Church, and whether this is identical with the king- 
dom, or the nucleus of the kingdom, or the appointed 
means of coming in touch with it, at least the two 
ideas seem to be closely connected in the mind of the 
Master. So His heart leaps out to St. Peter, when 
the acknowledgment of His Messiahship shows the 
apostle's understanding of His teaching: "Thou art 
Peter [the Eock-man], and upon this rock [of such 
faith as thine] I will build My Church.'' 

Yes : our Lord came to found a kingdom, to build 
a Church. He called His disciples to be made pillars, 
foundation stones, of this Church; He trained them 
for that, ordained them, sent them out with wonder- 
ful powers. He instituted a sacrament of admission 
into the kingdom: they were to "go therefore and 
teach [make disciples, make Christians of] all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'' This baptism was to 
be the means of their entrance into the kingdom: 
"Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he 
cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Brought into 
the kingdom by baptism, they were to find another 
sacrament of fellowship and unity, through the life 
which came from Him: "Except ye eat the flesh of 
the Son of Man," He said, "and drink His blood, ye 
have no life in you." "The Lord Jesus, the same 



CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 



113 



night in which He was betrayed^ took bread; and 
when He had given thanks He brake it, and said, 
Take, eat: this is My body, which is broken for you: 
this do in remembrance of Me. After the same 
manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, 
saying, This cup is the new testament in My Blood: 
this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance 
of Me/^ 

So St. Paul writes of this sacrament. He is per- 
fectly clear, too, about our Lord^s purpose for His 
Church. With him there was no doubt of the Mas- 
ter's meaning. What a tremendous Churchman St. 
Paul was ! To him the Church which Christ founded 
is the most wonderful thing on earth. Men, as soon 
as they believe, are to be brought into it, and when 
they are so numbered among its members they are in 
such vital union with Christ that the relationship can 
be expressed only by so striking a statement as that 
^Ve are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His 
bones.'^ St. Paul regards the Church as the very 
Body of Christ. As our own bodies have many mem- 
bers, each with its own office, and all joined in living 
union, so we as members of the Body of Christ, 
His Church, each called into this membership for 
some particular work for Christ, are in the closest 
union with Him, who is the Head. 

The thought is not St. PauFs : he received it from 
the Lord, who had used just as strong a figure when 
He said: ^^I am the vine, ye are the branches." As 
the branches are knit into the vine, so that the sap 
flows out into them, and through them to the leaves, 



114 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



freshening and quickening the Youngest shoot, so 
are we grafted into Christ, the true vine, ^\e are 
members of His Body, and that Body is His Church. 

So the thought, given by our Lord, developed into 
another figure by St. Paul, is to be traced in the 
action of the apostles. The real way to come unto 
Christ is to enter the kingdom. When men believed, 
they were baptized, and being baptized they became 
members of an organized body. "The Lord added to 
the ChurcJi daily such as Avere being saved.^^ 

After all, this is really the only ground on which 
we can ask for Church membership and allegiance. 
We must go "back to Christ*^ and discover that it is 
an essential part of His teaching. It is not enough 
to urge that Church membership is convenient and 
that an organization is useful in Christian work as in 
everything else. It is not enough to urge that it is 
expedient, a practical way of showing the world one's 
personal acceptance of Christ. It is not sufficient 
if we show its helpfulness and urge that in common 
worship we renew our strength. We must show that 
it is according to "'the mind of Christ''. If I belong 
to a Church, I must belong because I find that He 
commanded or desired it. If He did not regard it 
as of primary importance: if He did not make it an 
essential part of His teaching; if, indeed, it did not 
so largely occupy His thought as to appear to be 
a xitol and integral part of His scheme of redemption 
— then I am not obliged to give it any large part 
in my own thought. It is merely a matter of prefer- 



CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 



115 



ence^ of likes and dislikes, of personal inclination 
and adaptability. I may belong to a Church or not, 
as I choose. 

What our picture of Christ has shown is that the 
Church is indeed His plan and therefore that we 
have no right to substitute for it our own ideas. It 
is His forethought, not man^s afterthought. Christ's 
followers, if they understand His plan, can never be 
content to be '^^unattached'\ They must be more 
than the ^"^amorphous aggregate of individuals'\ If 
there is any one lesson which has been driven home 
to the conscience of thoughtful and earnest Christians 
during the past years of war, it is that of our weak- 
ness to save the world because of our disunion — and 
disunion has now become more than a tragically 
needless multiplication of sects, it is disorganization, 
individual independence run mad, complete lack of 
any corporate consciousness. The present situation 
could never have arisen had Christ's idea been kept 
in mind. He came not simply to save individuals, 
but to unite them in a body to carry on His work of 
salvation. 

So we see why we must belong to some Christian 
body, be members of some Church. It is the first 
step by way of obedience to Christ. He commands 
that we should be baptized; He told His apostles so 
to make Christians of all men. He said that this 
was the one way of entrance into His kingdom. He 
it is, too, who commands the other great act of 
obedience, the eating of His spiritual flesh and blood 
in Holy Communion. To obey that command we 



116 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



must be ^^members of a Churcli'\ Whether we see 
the need of these things or not^ then, whether we see 
the reason of them or not — ^we are bound to do what 
Christ says. He is our Master and His word is law. 
He commands us to be joined to Him in His Church 
and therefore we have no choice in the matter. 

But His commands are coupled with wonderful 
promises of life and so we are called upon to "join a 
Church'^ because this is the best way of gaining 
strength for our spiritual life. If baptism is really 
a new birth, as St. John's report of our Lord^s words 
tell us: if the Holy Communion is really a feeding 
upon Him, so that we receive His glorified life 
within us; if the sacraments are really the means 
by which the strength of the Vine flows out into us, 
who are the branches — then we can be strong here 
in this spiritual home, as we cannot be if we remain 
without. We ^'join the Church*^, then, that we may 
find the grace we all need so much if we are to follow 
the Master we love — or claim, or wish, to love — so 
well. 

Finally, we should belong to the Church because 
that is the lest way of helping others. Our Chris- 
tianity is not true and earnest if it stops at self. We 
cannot center all our wishes on the saving of our own 
souls. We wish to help others, even as we need to be 
helped ourselves. ISTow we can best do that in the 
Church — never mind now in which Church, but in 
some one of the various religious societies. 

What would the world be if all the Churches were 
swept away to-morrow ? Imperfect they are, through 



CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 



117 



man^s sin (even as Christ said would be the fact) ; 
but;, imperfect as organized Christianity is, yet it is 
the greatest power for good the world has ever seen or 
dreamed of. If you know any better way of taking 
your part in the work of helping others, and so uplift- 
ing the world, show it to us ; but if you do not know 
any surer method, then follow Christ^s plan, and 
go where others have found their greatest help and 
support. 

This will suggest some of the objections which one 
hears against Church membership. 

Men say: ^^I do not go to church, or I do not 
belong to the Church, because there are so many 
unworthy members in every denomination I know. It 
seems sometimes as if Church people were, many of 
them, nothing but hypocritical and insincere ^pro- 
fessors^ of religion.^^ This is the objection which, 
perhaps, we hear oftenest — ^that there is a lack of real 
Christianity on the part of Christians in general, and 
that the Churches do not, therefore, show sufficient 
vital force to induce adherence. The complaint is 
heard very often among men of the working class. 
One American labor leader has written: "Working- 
men like everything in Christianity except Christians. 
They have lost confidence in the Church, but not in 
Christ.^^ As another well-known leader phrases it: 
"The complaint made by American workingmen 
against the Churches is that they fail to influence 
conduct, that they fail to impress their fundamental 
principles on those who give direction to the prac- 



118 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



tical affairs of life in the counting room, in legislative 
halls and on the bench^ although these men profess 
Christianity. Laboring men do not feel that it is 
better for them to work for a Christian than for one 
who denies the obligations of Christianity — the out- 
come of experience has not taught them that such is 
the case ; they do not believe that Church membership 
on the part of their landlord insures just and consid- 
erate treatment for his tenants; they do not flock to 
the merchants who acknowledge Christ as their Mas- 
ter, in confidence that they will merely on that 
account receive of them honest goods for a fair price/' 

The complaint is one which may well cause those 
who are in the Church serious and sober thought. It 
should bring home to us a solemn sense of our awful 
responsibility for our fellows. 

Yet, so far as the objection is concerned, a little 
logical dissection may not be amiss. There are bad 
people in the Churches, are there? Well, we may 
answer, there are bad people in business, and you meet 
a lot of dishonest folk wherever you transact any 
ordinary week-day labor. There are immoral and 
unworthy people who sit next you when you go to a 
theater or other place of amusement. If you are a 
union member, you know that every labor organiza- 
tion has its ugly and brutal followers. There are 
unpatriotic and unworthy Americans. But you do 
not renounce business, and give up amusements, and 
expatriate yourself, on that account. [N'o more should 
you stay out of the Church because its members 
are not what they should be. If Christ founded a 



CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 



119 



Church, and if He left therein a storehouse of grace 
for the soul, it is your duty to be there, seizing these 
advantages though others do not, trying if possible, 
as you follow Christ yourself, to deepen the lives of 
others who should be following Him too. 

There are bad people in the churches, are there? 
Indeed, did not Christ say there would be ? Read the 
parable of the wheat and the tares, or of the net full 
of fishes bad and good, and see that it is not at all 
remarkable that among the members of any Christian 
denomination there will be some, though by no means 
as many as you suppose, who are hypocritical, or self- 
seeking, or inconsistent and insincere. It will be so 
till the great harvest, when the chaff shall be separated 
from the wheat. The real point at issue is this : Did 
or did not Christ Himself found a Church ? Did He, 
or did He not, make it a home of grace ? If He did 
leave the Church behind Him, an organized body, 
it is our duty to be within its fold, no matter who 
else may be there or however poorly their lives may 
square with their profession. 

Or, again : ^^I have never joined a Church, because 
there are so many Christian denominations that it is 
impossible to decide among them. I stay outside, 
therefore, and seek to be a follower of Christ in my 
own way.^^ 

Possibly you have not read the anecdote of the 
young man who answered an enthusiastic Church 
worker in that spirit. ^^Oh, I just run around,^^ 
he said gaily. "I don^t understand the difference 
between the Churches ; in fact, there is a great deal in 



120 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the Bible itself that I don't imderstand^ and until I 
do, of course I can't join any Church/^ 

^^How many hours a day do you spend studying 
this matter asked the questioner. 

^^Hours he repeated in surprise. 

^^Well, then, minutes 

The young man was dumb. 

^^Ah/^ said his companion, with patient sadness, 
"not one? If you thought a knowledge of geology 
necessary to your success in life — or astronomy, or 
shorthand — ^you would not think of spending less than 
one hour a day in its study, perhaps two, perhaps 
three; and you would not expect to know or under- 
stand it without that exertion. But the knowledge 
of God, of Jesus Christ, of salvation — the highest and 
deepest of all knowledge — you sit around and wait 
for, as if it would come like a flash of lightning.^^ 

Does any one see a likeness to himself in this 
young man who was satisfied "just [to] run around^^ ? 

And then there is the man who does not belong 
to the Church because he is not good enough. 

My dear friend, if you thought you were good 
enough, we should ask you to go back and give it more 
consideration before you came to seek admission at 
the door of the kingdom. It is because you are not 
good enough, that we urge you to come. The Church 
is not the home of good people; it is a refuge for 
sinners. If only you realize your own unworthiness, 
and are longing to be better, and feel that you need 
help to make you what you would wish to be, then 



CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH 



121 



the Church holds out her arms to welcome you. The 
Church is not a mutual admiration society where 
men and women are admitted who have reached a 
certain degree of goodness; it is rather a resting 
place for those who are sinful, but find themselves 
weary and heavy laden with their sin, who can say 
that the remembrance of their faults is grievous unto 
them, the burden of them intolerable. If, when you 
say you are not good enough, you merely mean some- 
thing of a vague, general character, that you are con- 
scious of sin — we answer, that is the very reason you 
need to come. 

Perhaps you mean more than that. Perhaps there 
is some special, definite obstacle that keeps you back, 
some pet fault, some secret disloyalty, some besetting 
sin, that you will not, and have not tried to give up. 
Then, we say, if it is something as definite as this, 
put it away. If for this reason you are not ready to 
come, make yourself ready. Do you remember how 
the Lord Christ says, ^^If thou bring thy gift to the 
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
ought against thee [that is, that you have wronged 
him in any way, or are on such bad terms with him 
as would make you come before God with a burden 
on your conscience], leave there thy gift before the 
altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy 
brother, and then come and offer thy gift.^^ Christ 
does not for a moment hint that if we make such a 
discovery, we are to keep away from the altar. He 
says, rather. Go and get rid of this that makes you 
unworthy. And be in haste about it. Do not delay. 



122 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Do not loiter. ^^Agree with thine adversan^ quickly/^ 
Christ does not sa}% Let the matter drop. He says, 
Settle the difficult}^ Get rid of the sin. Put away 
the obstacle. Then come and ofEer thy gift. 

The trouble with the ayerage Churchman to-day 

is that ^'his religion carries no atmosphere, no courage, 
no conviction; it is hesitating, impotent, unsaving.'^ 
Men have made the Church so much less than Christ 
meant it to be. In the words of a friendly critic, 
^Thurch people have failed to reach the masses because 
of the passivity, drowsy devotion, and blind obedience 
which they ignorantly think is religion. They 
indulge in public worship to secure promises and 
favors, not in order that they may get to God to 
become better and more active men and women in 
life.''-' ' 

Yes, yes, yes. But, ah I it is so much easier to 
criticize than to correct. Impotent as the Church is, 
the remedy does not lie in abandoning Christ's ideal. 
It lies in seeking loving fellowship with all who wish 
to embody His ideal. To help the Church to fulfil 
its mission is a better thing than to stand outside and 
complain. A^Tiatever its faults, it is still the chief 
institution in the world that labors persistently and 
definitely for righteousness. If it does not stand for 
all that you would like to have it represent, it is your 
business to get inside and make it rise to new ideals. 



- Adderley : The Creed and Real Life. 



CHOOSING A CHURCH 



123 



XIV. 

CHOOSING A CHURCH 

'E have seen that Christ founded a Church, 



YY which is the nucleus of His kingdom — the 
kingdom of God^ or the kingdom of Heaven. The 
Church is Christ^ s plan of redemption^ not man's 
attempted improvement on His plan. To enter its 
membership, therefore, is to act in accordance with 
the mind of the Master. We ought to belong to some 
religious communion. 

But which one ? How shall we choose a Church ? 
There are many denominations, all claiming to be 
Christian Churches: how shall we decide their 
claims? how shall we know which is the best? how 
can we make up our minds which to join? That is 
the second serious question, then, that we are bound 
to face : how to choose a Church. 

We are all acquainted with the ordinary way of 
deciding the matter. A man goes where his friends 
go, or where the members of the congregation are 
most congenial. He joins the same Church of which 
his parents were members. Or he goes where the ser- 
vice and the music are most to his taste. Or he iden- 




124 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



tifies himself with some congregation whose pastor 
pleases him^ or where the preaching is most accept- 
able. Or worst of all — though he does not confess 
this as his motive^ and perhaps is hardly aware of it 
himself even — he goes where he and his family will 
gain social standing and secure an introduction into 
certain exclusive circles. 

In one of these various ways^ having once made 
up his mind to belong to a Church, he decides on the 
one that shall be his choice. After all, he says, it 
doesn^t really make much difference where I go. The 
Churches are all moving toward the same goal and 
working with the same end in view. There are many 
religious roads, but they all lead heavenward, and it 
hardly matters much in which one I make my start. 

So, perhaps, you who read this have been accus- 
tomed to talk yourself. But if you will stop a mo- 
ment to reconsider the matter, you will find that this 
question of Church membership is a much more 
serious thing than that. 

It must be plain to you, if you think about it at 
all, that if Christ really founded a Church, the one 
right way to decide which body we shall join is to try 
as best we can to find out which is the Church that 
Christ established. It may involve considerable study 
on our part ; it may lead to much searching of heart 
and much examination of the foundations of our be- 
lief ; it may lead us to lay aside certain opinions that 
we have imbibed almost from infancy ; it may shatter 
old and dear relationships — but nevertheless, since 
this is the greatest question in life we shall ever have 



CHOOSING A CHURCH 



125 



to decide^ it should be settled in all seriousness and 
earnestness^ at no matter what expense of time and 
thought. The spiritual things are the most important 
things in the worlds our relations with God are more 
to be considered than any relations with men, and 
since the choosing of a Church involves our whole 
spiritual development and will affect our whole life 
with God, it should not be settled lightly and 
carelessly. 

If we have decided to belong to a Church, then, 
and if we have so decided because we believe it to be 
in accordance with the expressed desire of Christ, the 
only right way to make our choice among the many 
Christian bodies that claim to spring from Him is to 
try to learn which, in its doctrines, government, and 
worship, is most like the Church Christ founded. We 
must ask which resembles the primitive Church, in 
doctrine unchanged from what the apostles taught 
and practised ; which has a Church polity such as we 
find among the first Christians; which has a Church 
worship such as the study of the Bible and of history 
would show to be like that of the first ages of the 
Churches life. 

It may be that we shall never be able to decide all 
this, oi;; it may be that we shall make a wrong decision 
—but at least we can try to find out the truth, at least 
we can enter upon the study with that seriousness 
which the subject demands. Then, if we have done 
all in our power to discover ^Vhich Church is right", 
and have failed, we shall not be blamed. 



126 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 

Just at this point we hear some one say that in 
such a search we are foredoomed to failure. With 
scores^ and even hundreds^, of denominations asserting 
that there we shall find the pure Church of Christ, it 
will be impossible to decide with any certainty among 
their conflicting claims. That is where the thought- 
ful, well-grounded Churchman disagrees with you. 
He is a Churchman by conviction and he believes you 
can decide, and can decide with no book but the Bible 
in your hand. 

Let us take our Bibles, then, imagine yourselves 
among some of the scenes described in its pages, and 
try to see what the primitive Church was like. In 
this examination of Scripture we must ask you, how- 
ever, to remember one thing: that in the case of any 
dispute over the meaning of a passage, we can learn 
which is the true view by consulting the early fathers 
of the Church. What did they think the passage 
meant? What, in the early, undisputed general 
councils, did they say about Church doctrine? In 
their opinions we have the interpretation of the men 
who came immediately after the time of Christ and 
His apostles, as to what the Bible teaching means — 
just as if, for example, in the interpreting of one of 
Lincoln's speeches, we could have the opinion of 
ISTicolay or Hay, or the personal recollection of some 
one who had known Lincoln or at least was well 
acquainted with those who did know him. 

With Bible in hand, then, and with this warning 
in mind, let us try to see what the primitive Church 
was. 



CHOOSING A CHURCH 



127 



(1) We are in Ephesus^ and we hear that the 
great apostle St. Paul is coming to the city. We join 
the crowds of people who are going to hear him 
preach. Among them are some men who press for- 
ward to converse with him. "We have heard/' they 
say, "of what you told the jailor at Philippi; and 
many others have received the same words, so full of 
comfort. We remember that you said, ^Believe on the 
Lord J esus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.^ And we 
do believe. We have heard of His wonderful life, of 
His death for us, of His glorious resurrection. We 
believe in Him as the Son of God.'' 

So they speak, and St. Paul looks at them, and 
asks: "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye 
believed ?" They are puzzled. "We have not so much 
as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost." And 
now it is St. Paul's turn to be astonished. "Unto 
what then were ye baptized ?" he asks ; and they say, 
^TJnto John's baptism." 

"Ah," says the great apostle, "John but baptized 
with the baptism of repentance. His was an act 
whereby men, openly confessing their sins, took their 
place among those who looked for the coming redemp- 
tion. As he baptized the people, he said to them 
that they should believe on Him who should come 
after, that is, on Jesus Christ. His baptism brought 
no new grace of life; that must come from Him 
whose forerunner John was, who should baptize with 
the Holy Ghost and with fire." (So we must under- 
stand the brief report of the apostle's words given us 
in the Acts.) And "when they heard this, they were 



128 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when 
Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost 
came on them.'^ ^ 

So we see that with St. Paul something must fol- 
low belief in Christ: the believer must be baptized^ 
and then apostolic hands must be laid upon him^ that 
he may receive the Holy Ghost. 

(2) But was that the general practice? 

We go back a few years^ and now we are in 
Samaria. St. Philip is preaching there, and when the 
people believe him thus ''preaching the things con- 
cerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus 
Christ/"' what happens? ^'They were baptized, both 
men and women. 

But is that all ? Does he not put his hands upon 
them, as did St. Paul with the Ephesian converts? 
Xo, apparently not. Ah, wait ! It is not St. Philip 
who ^'confirms'' them, but the gift is to be theirs 
nevertheless. ^^When the apostles which were at J eni- 
salem heard that Samaria had received the word of 
God, they sent unto them Peter and J ohn : who, when 
they were come dora, prayed for them, that they 
might receive the Holy Ghost (for as yet He was 
fallen upon none of them : only they were baptized in 
the name of the Lord Jesus). Then laid they their 
hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost." 

So, after all, the same course was followed here. 
First, baptism ; then what we now call confirmation, 

^ Acts of the Apostles, xix. 1-6. 
^ Acts of the Apostles, viii. 12-17. 



CHOOSING A CHURCH 



129 



the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost 
in all His fulness. 

(3) But why did not St. Philip confirm? If he 
baptized^ why must an apostle be sent for the second 
rite? 

Well^ we go back a little further, to see who St. 
Philip was. It is in Jerusalem, and among the early 
Christians there have been disputes over the admin- 
istration of the charitable funds — for these early 
Christians were not perfect, you see, any more than 
are the later ones. But now the dispute has been 
settled, and seven men are selected for ordination at 
the apostles' hands into a lower order of the ministry.* 
Philip is among these, and, as we see, his ordination 
gives him certain powers. He preaches ; he baptizes ; 
but he is not of the apostolic order, he is only a deacon, 
and so he does not confirm or ordain. 

(4) So you say: Now I see it all. There were 
these deacons and others like them, I suppose, who 
afterward formed the ministry of the Church; but 
when the apostles died their gifts died with them, 
and that is the reason so many do not believe in con- 
firmation to-day: those who could give the Holy 
Spirit are no longer among us. 

Wait a moment ! There were not these two orders 
of the ministry only; there were three. 

We are in one of the Eastern cities, and we meet 
a Christian who has with him copies of St. PauPs 
epistles to the different Churches which He founded. 



' Acts of the Apostles, vi. 1-6. 



130 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Here is the one to the Philippian Church. St. Paul 
joins St. Timothy with him, and then we find from 
his salutation that there are two other orders of the 
ministry besides, making three in all: ''To all the 
saints which are at Philippi/^ he says, "with the 
bishops and deacons.^^ ^ There are other epistles, too, 
and in them we read of presbyters (sometimes called 
bishops), as well as deacons. St. Titus is bidden by 
St. Paul to ordain them in every city (Titus i. 5) ; 
St. Timothy is given charge concerning them (I. Tim. 
V. 17) ; and in one of St. Peter's epistles also (I. 
Peter v. 1) we find him exhorting the elders or pres- 
byters. Moreover, these elders, like the deacons, are 
evidently of the clergy, not merely specially appointed 
laymen. 

Nor does the ofiice of the apostles cease with 
themselves. Not to prolong the subject further, we 
should find, if we had the Greek originals of the New 
Testament in our hands, the following list of those 
who are expressly called apostles, in addition to the 
Twelve: Matthias, chosen by lot to be of their num- 
ber; Paul, "an apostle not of men, neither by man, 
but by Jesus Christ,^' James, whom tradition names 
as the first Bishop of Jerusalem, Barnabas, Andron- 
icus, Junias, Epaphroditus, Timothy, Titus, Silas, 
and Luke. "Moreover, they are seen doing the same 
work as the Twelve. For example, history and tradi- 
tion bear witness to the fact that the Apostle Timothy 
was the first Bishop of Ephesus, and the Apostle 



* Philippians i. 1. 



CHOOSING A CHURCH 



131 



Titus the first Bishop of Crete^ being ordained and 
appointed thereto by the Apostle Paul. The Epistles 
of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus not only accord 
with this statement^ but are irreconcilably absurd on 
any other supposition; for they show that these men 
were left by St. Paul not only with power to do such 
things as all presbyters could do^ but also to superin- 
tend the whole work of the Church in their respective 
jurisdictions — to give order concerning the doctrine 
which the presbyters were to preach; to rectify all 
deficiencies; to ordain presbyters in all the cities; to 
examine into the qualifications of all candidates for 
the priesthood and the diaconate, being careful to lay 
hands suddenly on no man. . . . And whence came 
all this authority and power? St. Paul tells us^ for 
he says to his ^Son Timothy^, ^Stir up the gift of God 
which is in thee by the putting on of my hands,^ 

Yes — there were three orders of the ministry^ dea- 
cons^ presbyters^ and apostles ; and the apostolic office 
is carried on to the successors of the original Twelve. 
Why the name ^T)ishop'^ afterward came to be re- 
stricted to them we cannot now stop to explain. 

(5) Well^ you say^ now we have the whole sum 
and substance of Christianity. I must be a follower 
of Christy baptized in His Name^ and by the laying on 
of apostolic hands I must receive the gift of the Holy 
Spirit. 

Again^ wait a bit ! There is something more. If 
we are stilly in imagination^ to company with these 
early Christians, we shall find that they meet for 
worship. They ^^continue steadfastly in the apostles' 



132 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, 
and in prayers.*' And this worship, at first daily, is 
always the special feature of Sunday. "We are at 
Troas. when St. Paul preaches, and it is on ^*the first 
day of the week'' that ''the disciples came together to 
break bread.** ^ 

]\IoreoYer. the worship is liturgical : it consists of 
^'the prayers** — that is the usual, well-known, set 
fonns of prayer, not prayer generally. 

And what was the worship ? It was "the breaking 
of the bread** — in other words, the Holy Communion 
— and it was, as we have seen, not a service to be held 
two or three times a year, but every ''first day of the 
weet**. 

And how was it regarded ? Did these early Chris- 
tians consider it a mere memorial feast? Xot so. 
If we still hold in our hands those epistles of the 
great St. Paul, we find that he believed that in this 
service the Lord Christ was really present. Writing 
to the Corinthians, he tells them how the Eucharist 
was instituted, and then warns them in solemn words 
to be careful to communicate only after due and 
worthy preparation; for ^'Vhosoever shall eat this 
bread and drink this cup unworthily shall be guilty 
of the Body and Blood of the Lord.^^ Why? Be- 
cause ^'Iie that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth 
and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning 
the Lord's Body,*^ — that is, not discerning the 
presence, though it is really and truly there. 



^ Acts of the Apostles, xx, 7. 



CHOOSING A CHURCH 



133 



(6) So then^ you say^ we at last have the whole 
scheme of the Church. We shall do all this ourselves^ 
and when our children are grown up we shall have 
them baptized, too. 

But why wait? If we go into any of these early 
Christian assemblies we shall see not adults only, but 
we shall find baptized children there. St. Peter, when 
he urged the first converts to be baptized, said, ^^The 
promise is unto you, and your children^^; St. Paul, 
writing to those who were members of the Church, 
addresses children as well as adults ; and we hear that 
whole families and households have been baptized — 
among whom, surely, there were children.® 

(7) And now, you say, all is clear. We have 
found the Church, we have entered its fold and re- 
.ceived its gifts of grace. Here we will stay, free from 
sin, so long as life remains. 

Alas, some day temptation proves too great, and 
you fall, and fall grievously. You ask pardon of 
God, but there comes no comfort to your soul; you 
are weak, and you sin again, and with this fresh error 
staring you in the face, you fear that God will not 
forgive you. As you are thus troubled, weary and 
heavy laden, you meet St. John. He hears your sad 
tale, lifts his hands over you, blesses you, and bids 
you depart in peace. For you are forgiven, he says; 
you need not doubt it; my words, as I speak them by 
authority of God, bring you the blessed assurance. 

•Acts of the Apostles, ii. 38-39; Ephesians vi. 1; Colos- 
sians iii. 20; Acts xvi. 15, 33; I Cor. i. 16. 



134 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Did not our Lord Himself give us this power? Did 
not He say, as He breathed on ns, "Eeceive ye the 
Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are re- 
mitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, 
they are retained^^ ? 

(8) So, as you depart in blessed peace and calm, 
you think of the angelic face of the saintly Apostle, 
and you say. Surely, surely here I have the Church's 
head, here is the father of all the faithful. Another, 
however, remembers the marvellous labors of the won- 
derful Apostle to the Gentiles, and interrupts you, ?fo, 
St. Paul is the head of the Church. And yet an- 
other, ISTo, it is St. Peter : to him the Lord gave the 
keys of the kingdom of Heaven. 

As we dispute, there enters one who attended the 
first council of the Church at Jerusalem."^ He tells 
us that none of these presided at the council, but that 
its president was St. James, not of the original 
Twelve; he says that the apostles, elders, and breth- 
ren (the bishops, clergy, and laity) there came to- 
gether; he tells us how, many years later, St. Paul 
withstood St. Peter face to face; in many ways he 
makes us understand that the apostles were equals, 
members of a college, or body, and that the head of 
the Church is neither St. Peter, nor St. Paul, nor St. 
John — its Head is our Eisen Lord, the Lord Christ 
who rules it from His throne in heaven. 

So you have the picture of the primitive Church. 



^ Acts of the Apostles, xv. 1-31. 



CHOOSING A CHURCH 



135 



What body^ of all the Christian communions about 
us^ resembles it? 

You have seen what its characteristics are : En- 
trance is by baptism for young and old; then comes 
confirmation, the laying on of hands for the seven- 
fold gift of the Holy Ghost, and always by an apostle 
or his successor; then Holy Communion, celebrated, 
not two or three times a year, but every Lord^s Day ; 
then, if the soul requires it, absolution by a duly com- 
missioned ambassador of God; there is a liturgical 
worship, as we should expect with those accustomed 
to the prayers of the synagogue and the elaborate 
ritual of the temple; there is a threefold ministry, 
of apostolic origin — threefold, as the ministry of 
the Jews (High-priest, Priest, and Levite) would 
foreshadow. 

What modern communion is most like the picture ? 
Surely not the Eoman. Apostolic it is; we cannot 
deny that it is a branch of the One, Catholic Church. 
But where, in this picture of primitive Christianity, 
do you find an infallible Pope? Where do you find 
bishops degraded to be merely the local agents of a 
Pope? Where do you see the mutilated sacrament? 
Where compulsory confession? Where the excessive 
reverence of the saints? Where the cultus of the 
Virgin Mary, her elevation from the chief place 
among saints (which is undoubtedly hers) to the 
position of Queen of Heaven and Chief Intercessor, 
through whom special access to God is to be had? 

Nor does the picture find its counterpart in the 
modem denominations. With them we do not find 



136 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the threefold ministn^;, the apostolic order^ the fre- 
quent communion^ the high regard for the sacra- 
ments^ the unvarying insistence on baptism^ and the 
unfailing faith in the eucharistic presence. There 
we have no confinnation^ no belief in the ministerial 
function of blessing and absolving^ no dignity of 
worship. 

When therefore you ask the Episcopalian who has 

been mentioned^ why he belongs to his Church, his 
answer will run something like this : I am a Bible 
Christian. Because I am a Bible Christian I am an 
Episcopalian, a Catholic Churchman. Because I am 
a Bible Christian, I am an American Catholic, not a 
Eoman Catholic. Because I am a Bible Christian, I 
must belong to some Church, and I choose this be- 
cause it seems to me to be not only American and 
Catholic (or primitive) but Biblical and Evangelical. 
When I came into the Episcopal Church, I believe I 
came into the Church of Christ and His Apostles. 



THE EXTENSION OF THE INCARNATION 137 



XV. 

THE EXTENSION OF THE INCARNATION 

T heart the men of to-day are at least as good as 



are not found in their places in church on Sunday, it 
is more often than not because no plain, definite 
reason has been given why they should be there. We 
are to disabuse our minds of the idea that men and 
women stay away from church because they have no 
religion. They stay away because, for the most part, 
the matter has not been presented to them strongly 
on the divine side. Their idea of the Church is that 
it rests on very much the same level as a fraternal 
society. They think of it as an institution for incul- 
cating moral teaching, and if they do not identify 
themselves with it, the reason will often be found in 
the fact that they have no higher conception of it 
than this fraternal and social one. Possibly this is 
especially true of men. They think of the Church, 
when they think of it at all, as a large association 
doing, in its way, very much what other fraternal 
associations do; an organization that is very good in 
its general scope, but is quite unnecessary for them. 




earlier days and if they 



138 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



They like to have their wives go to church, they 
wish their children to go to Sunday school, and they 
themselves will attend some service occasionally, but 
they do not regard the Church as having anything 
in essence greater than what a lodge would give them. 

What we need, therefore, is to show them clearly 
and emphatically the real difference between the 
Church and all other organizations. They discuss 
the Church now as a society; regard various denom- 
inations as they would look at different fraternal asso- 
ciations, and would choose one or the other, just as 
they would choose the Masons rather than the Odd 
Fellows, or the Knights of Pythias rather than the 
American Mechanics, or the Eoyal Arcanum rather 
than either. We must show them that it is some- 
thing more than a human society. One thing differ- 
entiates it from every other organization, it is a home 
of grace. Various societies show men what is good 
and right and true ; the Church does this, too. It is 
not merely that the Church does it better than they 
can; the Church is the repository of God^s grace to 
enable tlx em to do what other societies can only point 
out and recommend. In other words, the Church 
must be presented, not occasionally but constantly, 
as a divine organism, not a human society; as the 
Body of Christ, full of His life, offering us divine 
strength and help, giving men grace to do what 
conscience points out as their duty. 

"Gospel means good news, not good advice.'' The 
Church is here, not merely to give us fair counsels, 
to teach us that this thing or the other is right 



THE EXTENSION OF THE INCARNATION 139 



and this or the other wrong, not simply to tell men 
that they should be more unselfish and more thought- 
ful of their brethren, or even to give them a satisfac- 
tory form of worship and so lift up their hearts to 
God. All this the Church can do and do much better 
than any of the human organizations that men allow 
to take her place, but the Gospel, as we all know, is 
much more than this ; it is the good news of the Incar- 
nate God, who suffered and died for us, has given us 
the great model of all living, and now abides in His 
Church, filling it with His own divine life, animating 
it through His Spirit, bringing its members into 
contact with Himself, and so providing them with 
that constant supply of grace, by which and by which 
alone they can follow in His steps. 

To make this perfectly clear we need to reiterate 
some things that have been said before. Man, we 
have seen, is a fallen creature; he was meant for 
better things. God the Son has come to lift him up 
once more into the beauty of holiness, that dignity of 
true humanity for which he was made. How, then, 
does our Lord accomplish this ? Our hope in Christ, 
we may answer, lies in this: not merely that in 
Him we have a perfect example, nor that His death 
redeems us from sin, but that with sin forgiven and 
a fresh start made possible, something more should 
still be done, our corrupted nature must be contin- 
ually cleansed and renewed by the communication of 
Christ's life to us. The sacrifice of the cross has 
given remission of sins, the life of Christ is a model 



140 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



on which, we are to build the new life, but that life is 
to be His life within us. 

Xot long since, in a railroad accident, a young 
man was terribly scalded. For months he lay in an 
hospital suffering intense agony. He had been so 
badly burned that the flesh would not heal again fresh 
and clean. Finally the physicians announced that it 
would be necessary to graft new and healthy skin 
upon the scalded members. Friends of the sick man 
offered their help, and hundreds of small pieces 
of skin taken from their bodies were grown on the 
injured parts of the maimed body of their comrade, 
until finally the wounds healed and the man was dis- 
charged cured. Xow something similar to this must 
be done to heal the sickness of men's souls. We are 
to be taken into Christ, joined to Him, so that, as it 
were. His flesh and ours come in touch and in that 
union the health and cleansing strength of His 
own perfect humanity are given to us. We are to be 
brought into direct contact with our Lord, a relation 
so close that our nature is sanctified in Him. So He 
Himself tells us that He is the vine and we are the 
branches : as the sap fiows from the trunk out into 
the branch, so the life of Christ is to flow out into our 
souls, till the strength that is His becomes ours, and 
we are once more full of spiritual energy and power. 

How is this to be effected? It will be seen now 
why we insist upon the Church's place in the scheme 
of redemption: it is because St. Paul tells us that 
there we are brought into this close and intimate 
relationship with Christ. The Church, he tells us, 



THE EXTENSION OF THE INCARNATION 141 



is the very Body of Christ, and by baptism we are 
brought into that Body, made members of it, in as 
vital a relation with its divine Head as are the mem- 
bers of the human body with the soul that gives it life. 

The Church is the Body of Christ. We shall see 
what it means, perhaps, if we ask what our own bodies 
are to us. The body is but the expression of the life 
within. Soul and body are united in the closest pos- 
sible relation, so that the outer frame reveals the 
inner spirit, the soul that lies behind it. What a 
mirror of the soul the face is, for example ! The saint 
generally looks the saint ; the sensual or worldly man 
often betrays his true character in every feature of his 
countenance. Now the Church is the Body of Christ : 
therefore those who are members of this Body are in 
as real a relation to Him as are the members of the 
human frame to the living soul that indwells and con- 
trols it. When our Lord works His will upon men. 
He does it by joining them to Himself, making their 
life a part of His own, and bringing them into union 
with Himself in a divine organism. 

That is part of what we mean when we repeat the 
familiar statement that the Church is the extension of 
the Incarnation. Just as, at the Incarnation, the Son 
of God took a body to Himself and in that was seen 
and known of men, so that they might actually come 
into touch with Him and in the contact of every-day 
life place themselves under His influence, so the 
Church of God now is an organism full of Christ's 
life, its members parts of a body so closely united to 



142 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Him that they are bone of His bone and flesh of His 
flesh — members of His body, of His flesh, and of His 
bones, as St. Panl puts it — a body in which His life 
flows in sacramental grace, so that by means of its 
sacred ordinances we may come into closer relation 
with Him than did those who looked into His face, 
touched His hands, and reverently knelt at His feet 
when He was here visibly among men. There is a 
grandeur and richness in this conception that puts to 
shame that thought of the Church which makes it 
merely a collection of believers, a gathering together 
of those who are tvjmg to follow Christ. We are 
more than that, we are members of our Lord, joined 
to Him by invisible bonds. 

Moreover, this union is not something that we 
can bring about by an act of our own; it is effected 
by our Lord Himself, through the conferring upon 
us of a new life. The gift is so great that we speak 
of it as nothing less than a re-birth in Him. St. Paul 
says that we are actually buried in Christ, and out of 
this burial rise into a new life in His nature. In 
baptism we ^^put on'^ Christ. The change is like the 
grafting of a branch into the vine, like the transplant- 
ing of a seed from a soil in which it could not ger- 
minate into one from which it can draw sustenance 
and bud and bear fruit. 

If we can succeed in impressing men with this 
idea of the Church, we shall surely win them to her 
fold. That many hold themselves aloof from organ- 
ized Christianity is not, we are sure, a sign that they 
are irreligious. It is merely an indication of our 



THE EXTENSION OF THE INCARNATION 143 



failure to show that the Church is a matter of vital 
necessity, because it is a household of grace into which 
men come through the sacrament of life and in which 
they are strengthened by the food of the soul. 

There are one or two simple truths springing out 
of this thought of the Church as the Body of Christ 
which especially need to be emphasized. 

(1) We should never forget, for example, that 
all baptized persons are members of the Church of 
Christ. It is surely of value to insist upon this in 
a day when the visible unity of the Church is broken. 
After all, despite our unhappy divisions, there is here 
the germ of a fuller unity. All who are baptized, 
whether they be Greeks, Eomans, Anglicans, or Prot- 
estants, are members of the Body of Christ. They 
may not live a true life of fellowship, they may in 
various ways hinder the completeness of their 
union with Christ, their Head, but their membership 
remains, nevertheless; it can never, while life lasts, 
be wholly lost ; it may always, by grace like that which 
first produced it, be restored and perfected. Here is 
a bond which we all recognize in theory. If we would 
once take it as a basis of practical action, it might 
prove of help to a broader and more charitable effort 
toward reunion. With Episcopalians there are some 
who pray for corporate reunion with Eome and the 
East; there are others whose love goes out to the 
thousands of Protestants about us, friends, neighbors, 
relatives; but how few there are who remember that 
we are all brethren, who have, therefore, the kindly 



144 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



sympathy and ready understaiiding to work for a 
closer unity on botli sides ! 

Yet all are members of the one Body. The Cath- 
olic Church is not this or that apostolically organized 
branchy nor all of them together, but the entire body 
of baptized believers. Of these some, indeed, may 
have partially severed their connection with Christ, 
by sin or schism; some may have failed to carry out 
their union with Him to its full completeness; but 
all are members, even though by their separation from 
the apostolic order they may have missed something 
of the continued flowing of the life of Christ that ever 
renews itself in the Body. My own body has many 
members and in some of them the circulation may be 
impeded, so that they have partly lost their strength, 
but they are members for all that and the body would 
be but a maimed and incomplete thing, if because they 
are weak they were to be cut off. This does not mean 
that every society of Christian people is a true branch 
of the apostolic Church. The organization of the 
Catholic Church is that which is administered by 
bishops who are charged with our Lord's commission ; 
but its memhership includes all who are baptized in 
the Triune Name of God. 

(2) Again, it is this thought of our individual 
membership in Christ that makes the conception of 
the Church just set forth of such practical personal 
importance. If we are members of Christ, the fact 
is full of the deepest possible meaning. Every sep- 
arate member of my body has its use ; the body would 
not be complete without it, could not do its work 



THE EXTENSION OF THE INCARNATION 145 



perfectly if deprived of it. To cut off any single 
member would be to maim and disfigure the whole. 
In like manner (we may say it reverently) each one of 
us is necessary in our Lord^s Body; He has for each 
one his special place and his special work ; He uses us^ 
the least, the poorest, the meanest, the weakest of us. 
Each has his individual work. No one else can do it 
as he can, for he was made for it and if he does not 
accept the task possibly it will never be done at all. 

We do this work with a strength other than our 
own. I move my finger; back of it is my hand, my 
arm, the power of my body, the entire force of my 
will. So it is with us in our union with Christ. Are 
we trying to do something for Him and for our fel- 
lows? Well, back of our weak little effort is the 
Church's strength, back of that the will of our Lord 
Himself. We are working for Him, we sometimes 
say; rather, He is working through us. All of His 
strength is back of our small endeavor ; all of His will 
behind us, all of His energy moving us on. We can 
never fail. We have only to surrender ourselves to 
Him, make ourselves His instruments, and things 
are sure to come out right. One who is baptized into 
the Body of Christ's Church ^^finds himself encircled 
by a power of inexhaustible strength and grace, in the 
might of whose everlasting glory he may forever and 
ever be quickened by undying fires, and renewed, 
and replenished, and reinvigorated by the ever new 
and ever increasing splendor of a life that can never 
fade, or diminish, or slacken, or fail.'' ^ 

^ H. S. Holland : Logic and Life, 



146 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



(3) We must be on our guard, however, against 
making this conception of the Church a mechanical 
one. Xo gifts of grace are ever effective independ- 
ently of our use of them. Though we are incorporated 
into Christ as members of His body, we must, each 
for himself, use the grace that flows in the body, or 
our privilege has but put us in worse condition than 
before. TTithout that lively faith which enables the 
soul to grow on what it has received, we are as if the 
hand were bound up, the branch of the vine cut away. 
What are we, except this faith keep us ever abiding 
in Christ? Lifeless, senseless, helpless clay — ener- 
gized and quickened into a body, then, only as we 
breathe of His Spirit and so take in His life. Let us, 
therefore, as we praise Him for the gift of His grace, 
pray that its flow within us may never slacken, or 
the torpor of its sloth creep over us; that His warm 
life blood may drive away the chill of unfaithfulness, 
its pulsating strength ever rouse and quicken us. We 
are members of Christ^s body ; God grant that we may 
never fall away and wither and die ! 



THE INCARNATION APPLIED 147 



XVI. 

THE INCARNATION APPLIED 

ALL men fell in Adam and the Incarnation of 
God the Son is to effect their redemption. This 
our Lord accomplishes through His Church, which 
is the extension of the Incarnation, the Body of Christ, 
left here in the world to manifest His life and show 
forth His death till He come. In this Church we 
come into spiritual contact with our Lord, we are 
knit up into His sacred humanity and are brought 
into as close a union with Him as that which joins a 
body and its members, a vine and its branches. 

We read certain passages of the Bible which tell 
us of this relation of Christ and His people and their 
mysterious language of promise is so rich and deep 
that it is impossible to exhaust the fulness of the 
meaning. Yet, wonderful as the promises are, the 
truth is so hard for us to understand and realize. We 
fall so short of what it seems to imply. Glimpses of 
heaven open to us and then we fall back to earth 
again, the soaring spirit held down by the flesh. Yes, 
we say, all this may be possible, but how can I believe 
that it has happened to me ? What do I know, what 



146 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



can I know, of sucli heights of communion, such ful- 
ness of divine fellowship ? I have never felt that all 
this has come to me: the promises are beantifnl ones, 
but so far as I am concerned they are unrealized 
ideals. 

Just here comes the sacramental system of the 
Church as a help to our appreciating the truth of this 
communion with God. Yes, it tells us, there is such 
a life of fellowship. God's grace is here for us and 
here in such fashion that we may indeed come in 
touch with it, thrill with it, as the wire quivers under 
the electric current, and the branch throbs with the 
inflowing sap, as the body is quickened and vivified 
by the pulsating blood. There is such a life, there are 
such gifts of grace. They come in such a way that 
we have absolute testimony of their reality. God 
knows our weakness, knows how we are bound down 
by what is earthly and material. We are not dis- 
embodied spirits, we are here in the flesh, with all 
the drawbacks of the flesh, and so when God 
brings us this grace He brings it through sensible 
channels. He ties up spiritual things and material, 
so to speak. There is always something we can see, 
touch, taste, handle. Faith is stimulated by sense 
and we can believe because there is something on 
which belief can rest, which it can grasp and hold. 
So, for us there need be no fears about the indwelling 
of the divine nature in us. We know we have been 
born again, because we have submitted to that ordi- 
nance which is the means of admission into the power 
of Christ's risen life. There need be no anxiety as 



THE INCARNATION APPLIED 149 



to whether we have gone through certain profound 
experiences, we know when it all happened ; the life is 
ours and it only remains for us to appropriate and 
use it. We know, too, that there was a time when the 
fulness of the Spirit became ours, because at a certain 
moment that was done for us which is the ordained 
means of His coming to men. We know that we have 
Christ within us, in all His power; in Holy Com- 
munion we have the outward sign, the thing that the 
eyes can see and the hands touch, the outward sign as 
the pledge and assurance of the inward grace. 

Now, notice : this does not do away with faith, or 
take its place. We need faith; it is the great neces- 
sity, that personal knowledge of our Lord, that indi- 
vidual apprehension of Him. We need grace also 
and when grace is offered it is the part of faith 
to appropriate and use it. People sometimes argue 
against sacramental doctrine as if a sacrament were 
regarded by Churchmen as a kind of magical charm, 
bestowing grace by the mere fact of its being admin- 
istered. "How can you suppose,^^ they will ask, "that 
a mere ceremony can bring me any grace? Do not 
the facts prove the very opposite? I see so many 
baptized people still living in sin: how, then, can 
you say that baptism brings a new gift of life ? How 
can you believe that confirmation is a bestowal of the 
Holy Ghost, when confirmed people so often fail to 
manifest in their lives the gifts of the Spirit? How 
can you believe that we receive the Body and Blood 
of Christ in the Holy Communion, when it is plain 
to anyone who will give the matter a thought, that 



150 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the most regular coimnunicants are often far less 
worthy Christians than those who rarely attend church 
and are never seen at the altar 

The answer is the same that was given in the last 
chapter. The gifts of God are spiritual and therefore 
should never be regarded as mechanical operations. 
Faith and grace are related and ^Vhile the sacraments 
actually convey to ns the food of the soul, a gift given 
from without, they do us no good unless there be a 
spirit within us awake to what is being given, welcom- 
ing the gift and ready to assimilate or digest it into 
our spiritual systenr^ just as common bread cannot 
nourish us or do us any good, unless it be eaten with 
appetite and assimilated and digested. 

The point made here is, that possibly grace is 
brought to us by sacramental means, so that the two 
may react upon each other. The faith which accepts 
grace is in turn aided and stimulated by the means 
through which grace is given. This, because the sac- 
raments are ^^plain and visible tokens, whereby we 
may know what we cannot see.'^ Over and over again, 
in His miracles, our Lord used material means — His 
own body, His hands. His garments, the common clay, 
the water of Siloam — for the conveying of a healing 
gift. Just because such means were used the faith 
of men Avas more easily aroused. In like manner we, 
now, find our faith quickened by the fact that spir- 
itual things are linked with material, the presence 
of the supernatural revealed by its union with the 
natural. 



THE INCARNATION APPLIED 151 



There is no picture of Christ more full of tender 
memories and associations than that which shows 
Him as the Good Physician who went about the fields 
and hills of Galilee restoring into harmony with the 
beautiful world about Him the disease-laden bodies 
of the multitudes of sick folk who came to Him for 
help. He was known as the Healer by most of those 
who first crowded to see Him. Many miracles of 
wonder-working power are ascribed to the Divine 
Healer. Whatever difficulties the miracles present^ or 
however we explain them, the record of Christ's gra- 
cious deeds runs so closely through the gospel narra- 
tive that it is like a thread woven into cloth which 
cannot be cut out without destroying the garment. 

Everywhere the Master^s group of disciples went 
with Him on His errands of mercy and watched Him 
at His work. They were like students in a clinic 
with eyes fixed on the busy surgeon. 

One remarkable thing they learned as they watched 
the Great Healer : Instead of healing all His patients 
by wholesale and by a word of power, He took them 
one by one and — we need to fix our attention on this 
— as each individual came for treatment some mate- 
rial agency was used in the accomplishment of the 
cure. It would be interesting to consider each of our 
Lord's miracles, and observe the carrying out of the 
same principle. It is sufficient, however, to say that 
in only five out of twenty-two recorded cases of mirac- 
ulous healing does He dispense with material means. 
Once, for example, there was brought to Him a man 
who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. 



152 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



In order to work a cure He need not^ of course^ do 
more than speak the word of divine command; bnt 
we read that '^^He took him aside from the multitude, 
put His fingers in his ears, and spit and touched his 
tongue/^ ' 

All this was a sacramental action; there were the 
outward signs of the divine power at work within; 
there was that which enabled the man to feel that 
something was being done for him, something he 
could see; the needed faith was called forth, and 
faith being expectant and receptive took the Healer 
at His word and the cure was effected. 

So, then, faith is needed, and sacraments are 
needed, too. Sacraments are the means by which 
grace comes to us. Faith is the assimilative power 
of the soul which enables us to make use of the grace. 
St. Paul joined both together. Xo one could insist 
more strenuously than did he on the absolute neces- 
sity of faith; no one, on the other hand, could state 
more clearly the sacramental doctrine, as when he 
speaks of the "laver of regeneration^^ in baptism, of 
the bestowal of the Holy Ghost in the laying on of 
hands, of the presence and power of Christ in the 
Holy Communion. ISTo one could show more plainly 
the union of the two things, faith and grace, than the 
great apostle when he says, ^'^We have access by faith 
into this grace.^^ 

What we have just seen of our Lord^s method of 



^ See my Bach to Christ. 



THE INCARNATION APPLIED 153 



healing is surely a complete answer to that disposition 
which fancies that the spiritual and the material must 
be set in opposition, the one against the other, as 
though they were naturally and inevitably incompat- 
ible. All that we see of human life teaches us the 
contrary. When we find soul and body influencing, 
and influenced by, each other, we should be more than 
surprised if the material were not associated with the 
spiritual in the redemption of those who exhibit this 
twofold nature and our astonishment would increase 
at the remembrance that the whole process of redemp- 
tion rests upon the principle of the Incarnation, of 
God made flesh, the spiritual possessing and filling 
the material beyond all power of conception. 

Along this line of thought, does it not occur to 
us at once that the plan of redemption involves of 
necessity, as of the very fitness of things, the employ- 
ment of material means for spiritual ends? Our 
bodies are to be redeemed as well as our souls; they 
also are to rise into newness of life ; and so that which 
is employed in their redemption is one in kind with 
them. We may go further, and add that not only are 
our bodies to be redeemed, but the whole material 
creation, of which we are a part, is to be lifted up 
with us into heavenly places. Through our bodies we 
are united with the world about us. When man fell, 
therefore, nature fell with him and became ^^subject 
to vanity and when man rises again the whole cre- 
ation will be raised with him. It may be, then, that 
God uses the things of nature as agencies by which 
His life is brought to us, because in so doing He joins 



154 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



earthly things in the redemption of man^ the head and 
representative of nature. This, at least, seems to be 
St. Panrs meaning, when he tells ns that "the whole 
creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, 
but by reason of Him who subjected it, in hope that 
the creation itself also shall be delivered from the 
bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory 
of the children of God.*^ 

If this view be true, it lifts the sacramental system 
out of the realm of mere congruity and adaptation to 
circumstance, and traces its origin back to eternal 
fitness and necessity. The thought has breadth and 
grandeur, asserting as it does the worth and dignity of 
the body, declaring it to be a sharer with the soul in 
redemption, predicting its survival and future devel- 
opment in a higher state, drawing on the material 
world for help and using as instrumental means for 
spiritual ends things below the intellectual order, 
whereby that race shall be aided in whose recovery 
nature herself has an interest and a direct concern.'' 

At any rate, we see that the Churches doctrine 
meets perfectly man^s need and corresponds exactly 
with his nature. 'Not does it in any way suggest the 
unexpected or the unusual. Why should not grace 
come by sacramental means? Is not man himself a 
sacrament: his body the outward and visible sign of 
the inner spirit ? Is not the world, indeed, the great- 
est of all sacraments: suggesting through the senses 
the divine life that lies behind its material manifesta- 



^ Dix : The Sacramental System, lecture i. 



THE INCARNATION APPLIED 155 



tions? ISTay, as man^s spirit is so closely related to 
his body, is not the whole spiritual world in like 
manner just as near the material? Keed it be sur- 
prising that the water of baptism, the bread and the 
wine of the Eucharist, should but veil and hide a pres- 
ence and power within ? Is not this, in truth, exactly 
what lies before us every time we turn our eyes upon 
the wonders of God's natural creation? Everything 
visible in the world expresses some spiritual meaning 
and contains some spiritual force. All nature is 
sacramental. "Human science and Holy Scripture 
unite their voices in teaching us that beneath the 
world of sense, penetrating and vivifying it, there is 
a world of spirit; that what we see and touch is but 
the crust and shell, the outward and visible sign of 
unseen realities, truly present, though sense cannot 
perceive them'\^ 

Two worlds are ours, 'tis only sin 

Forbids us to descry 
The mystic heaven and earth within 

Clear as the sea and sky. 



^MacColl: The Reformation Settlement, chapter v. 



156 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XVII. 
THE BAPTISMAL GIFT 

EXCEPT a man be born again lie cannot see the 
kingdom of God. There must be an entirely 
neAv beginning. Xo principle can bring forth results 
greater in kind than itself. If spiritual things are to 
be attained^ there must be a vital connection with 
the source of spiritual energy. This is what baptism 
gives us. It does not at once accomplish everything, 
ve must work out our own salvation; but it gives us 
the new principle, the impetus, the fresh start. 

The might of beginnings ! Evolution has made 
us familiar with the thought. The world did not 
come full grown from the hand of the Creator. It 
began in embryo and has since developed its number- 
less forms of life. AATiat a wonderful beginning was 
that, when the first vital spark touched that cell of 
matter ages ago and it began to thrill and swell with 
the God-given energy then imparted to it! There 
vras the origin of all life, the grass and the trees and 
the flowers, the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, 
the living creatures of the earth, man himself with all 
his later development. Xo step has ever equalled this 



THE BAPTISMAL GIFT 



157 



one^ from a dead world to the world a moment after, 
palpitating with the first current of life. Without 
that vital spark from God all the rest could never 
have been. 

When creation had reached its climax in man, 
there was another beginning. God breathed into man 
the breath of life, and he became a living soul, differ- 
entiated from the rest of creation by the fact that he 
had a spiritual nature, a life moulded after the image 
of God. It was only a beginning, yet how wonderful 
the step, how great the advance from brute to man ! 

Now that man has sinned and must be brought 
back to God, there is another creation, a new begin- 
ning once more. The old nature is not to be patched 
up and made over, a new one must come into being. 
There must be planted the germ of a higher life, a 
seed left indeed to develop, yet without which there 
can be no advancement. Only a new beginning, but 
think of the might of it! The impetus has been 
given. The wonder of that new birth is greater than 
all the growth that must yet come before we have 
attained to the beauty of holiness. Whatever the 
future may bring forth, it is this new life principle 
which is the important thing. With that all the rest 
is possible, all is there in embryo ; without it nothing 
can be accomplished. 

The wonder of baptism, then, is that it is a new 
point of departure, a regeneration, a second birth. 
As such, it includes pardon, the wiping out of the 



158 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



past; grace, the seed of the new life; light, the illu- 
mination of the soul for its progress in holiness. 

(1) Forgiveness — the cleansing from the burden 
of sin. 

Baptism is the means by which our Lord seals 
to us His pardon. TMien we turn to the Xew Testa- 
ment we find it full of the promise of remission of 
sins through this sacrament. St. Peter tells the 
multitude who had been convinced by his preaching 
to ^^repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus 
Christ, for the remission of sins*^ (Acts ii. 38). 
Ananias brings the command to the penitent Saul, 
^•Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins" 
(Acts xxii. 16). St. Paul tells us that Christ 
cleanses the Church by ^'the washing of water*' (Eph. 
V. 25-26). He reminds the Corinthians, ^'But ye 
have been washed, ye have been sanctified*^ (I Cor. 
vi. 11). In another place he speaks of the ^'washing 
[or laver] of regeneration** (Titus iii. 5). St. Peter 
says that ^^even baptism doth also now save us" (I 
St. Peter iii. 21). In all these texts we have as it 
were but the expansion of our Lord's own words, ^*He 
that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" (St. 
Mark xvi. 16). ^'Go ye therefore, and teach all na- 
tions, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (St. Matthew 
xxviii. 19). 

Eepentance is not enough, nor conversion. If re- 
pentance is full and sincere, if conversion is thorough, 
their genuineness will be manifested in a simple- 
hearted, childlike reliance on our Lord's promise and 



THE BAPTISMAL GIFT 



159 



we shall come to receive pardon in His way. So St. 
Paul^ stricken to the earth on the road to Damascus^ 
deeply penitent;, thoroughly converted^ is not yet par- 
doned. ^^Arise^ and be baptized^ and wash away thy 
sins/^ is the message Ananias brings him and he at 
once obeys. 

In the second Book of the Kings there is a story 
full of dramatic interest and rich in its display of 
human nature. ISTaaman^ captain of the army of the 
king of Syria.;, was a great soldier who stood high in 
the esteem of his sovereign. With all his riches and 
honors^ however^, his life was blasted; he was a leper. 
It is not necessary to go over the story in detail. We 
take it up at the point where I^aaman stands at the 
door of the prophet of Israel^ to whom he has been 
sent to be healed. "And Elisha sent a messenger 
unto him^ sayings Go and wash in Jordan seven times^ 
and thy flesh shall come again to thee^, and thou shalt 
be clean. But N'aaman was wroth^ and went away^, 
and said;, Behold^ I thought^ He will surely come out 
to me^ and stands and call on the name of the Lord his 
God;, and strike his hand over the placC;, and recover 
the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar^ rivers of 
Damascus^ better than all the waters of Israel? may 
I not wash in them;, and be clean ? So he turned and 
went away in a rage. And his servants came near^ 
and spake unto him^ and said^ My father^ if the 
prophet had bid thee do some great things wouldest 
thou not have done it ? how much rather then^ when 
he saith to theC;, Wash, and be clean ? Then went he 
down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, 



160 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



according to the saying of the man of God: and his 
flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, 
and he was clean/^ 

One thing is very plain in the story. ISTaaman^s 
cure was wrought by the power of God. There was 
no healing virtue in the water of the Jordan. God 
simply used it as the outward and visible means of 
conveying a healing strength from Himself. How- 
ever simple and absurd the remedy might seem, 
Xaaman must accept the cure in God^s way and 
through the means which God had appointed. His 
acceptance of the means is the test of his earnestness 
and faith. 

The storj^ recites very simply by anticipation God^s 
method of cleansing us from sin in baptism. If 
someone objects that what Jesus Christ wants is that 
we should believe on Him and give Him our hearts, 
we ask, How shall we show our belief except by sub- 
mitting to the ordinance which He commanded as the 
means of our moral cure? It seems a very simple 
thing, this baptizing with water in the Triune iSTame ; 
but to submit to it is to show our obedience, our faith, 
our earnestness. 

The first effect of baptism, then, is remission of 
sins — not merely justification in the sense of acquittal, 
but a gift of absolution carrying with it the power to 
loose from evil and gird up the forces of the soul 
against the weakness of sin. 

Sin, however, is not annihilated by the grace of 
baptism. It only receives its first blow, an assault 
that will eventually lead to its destruction. The sacra- 



THE BAPTISMAL GIFT 



161 



mental grace does not pluck up the roots of sin^ it 
gradually kills them. There still remains, even in 
the baptized, the ^^infection of nature'^, so that the 
lust of the flesh continues to be felt. In spite of the 
glory attached to the baptized, they still ^^offend in 
many things" (St. James iii. 2) ; they must still ^^keep 
under the body and bring it into subjection'^ (1 Cor. 
ix. 27) ; they must be on their guard to ^^abstain from 
fleshly lusts'' (I St. Peter ii. 11). Although their 
^^fellowship is with the Father and with His Son 
Jesus Christ", there must still be a struggle against 
evil within them, for sin is still there. ^^If we say 
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the 
truth is not in us" (I St. John i. 8). 
(2) Eegeneration. 

Forgiveness is not all that is needed, there must 
be an entire renewal of the spirit. We must be re- 
born. We have only to look about us, in order to be 
convinced of that. No one who has ever contem- 
plated the work that lies before those who would help 
and uplift their fellows can doubt it. Conscious of 
our own spiritual poverty, of our weakness of will and 
faintness of heart, of the moral evil that still lies un- 
conquered within us, we see in others the same terrible 
sin and depravity. The worst of it is that a mul- 
titude of other souls are ushered into the world every 
day with the same dreadful heritage, children of the 
thief, the drunkard, the sensually debased, poor, de- 
generate, stunted souls, born with a burden of disease 
in the spirit that is worse than the inheritance of 
physical ill which often presses upon them. 



162 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



What can possibly effect^ with such^ a permanent 
moral change? Education^ culture^ the force of ex- 
ample^ the power of love^ will do somethings but it 
does seem that there must be a remedy going deeper 
still. The glory of the Christian Chnrch is that she 
has that remedy. She has never lost hope^ because 
she believes that all men can be given a new nature^ 
that the old self can be thoroughly renewed through 
the application of the life of Jesus Christ Himself. 

In baptism^ then^ there is not only a death unto 
sin but a new birth unto righteousness — an upward 
life of the soul which begins the moment it is incor- 
porated into Christ. This much our Lord implies 
when He says^ in a passage which all the Church 
fathers explain as referring to baptism^ "Except a 
man be born of water and the Spirit^ he cannot enter 
into the kingdom of God'^ (St. John iii. 5). The 
epistles confirm this interpretation of our Lord's 
words. St. Paul speaks of our being "saved by the 
washing of regeneration'^ (Titus iii. 5) ; he says that 
"as many as have been baptized into Christ have put 
on Christ" (Gal. iii. 27) ; that "we have been buried 
with Him in baptism^ wherein also we are risen with 
Him^ through the faith of the operation of God" 
(Col. ii. 12) ; that "we are buried with Him by 
baptism into deaths that like as Christ was raised up 
from the dead by the glory of the Father^ even so we 
also should walk in newness of life" (Romans vi. 4). 

Yet it must be remembered again that this new 
birth is only a beginnings a mighty beginning it is 
true^ but only a start after all, and all that follows 



THE BAPTISMAL GIFT 



163 



must depend upon our use of the grace given. The 
baptized person is said to be born again^ because he 
has been incorporated into Christ by the life-giving 
Spirit; yet through his neglect the life of the Spirit 
may never grow in him. Regeneration may be com- 
pared to the effect which comes over a seed when it 
has been placed in nourishing soil. Before it was 
placed there the seed had life^ but it was practically 
dead until it had received the beneficial effects of that 
transplanting. Again^ as in the seed death takes 
place as well as life^ so regeneration is a death unto 
sin and then a new birth unto righteousness. Finally 
as the birth of the seed must be followed by its growth 
and to that end it must have sunlight^ moisture^ and 
nourishment^ so must regeneration^ with the baptized^ 
be followed by nurture in the Lord. We must not 
only be born again^ we must grow in the new life ; yet 
the growth can come only because of the vitality re- 
ceived at birth. The Churchy when she baptizes^ 
prays that ^^the old Adam may be so hurled that the 
new man may be raised up^^^ that ^^sinful affections 
may die^^^ and '^^all things belonging to the Spirit may 
live and grow^^ 

The fact that baptized persons sometimes never 
consecrate themselves to God is no evidence against 
the reality of the baptismal grace. It but shows that 
the gift is not unconditional; the grace appears in 
power and activity only on certain conditions. Only 
the foundation of salvation is laid; we must build up 
on that by our personal faith. (See I St. Peter iii. 
21.) One great argument for infant baptism is that 



164 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



children cannot erect such barriers against the recep- 
tion of grace as adults and therefore if the seed can 
be planted T\ithin them and through the care and 
attention of parents and sponsors given the chance of 
growth in early life^ the little ones who have received 
this blessing are the less likely to fall into grievous 
sin and the more readily recovered if they do. 
^^\dults may hinder or prevent the operation of grace 
by ignorance^ by indifference^ by want of due prepara- 
tion ; to their o^vn part must they look^ to their duty 
must they be urged by their spiritual guides; but 
the lot of the children is happier^ and of such is the 
kingdom of heaven/^ ' 
(3) Illumination. 

By this^ power is given to the spiritual faculties, 
enabling them to discern spiritual things. We re- 
ceive the Spirit, that we may know the things freely 
given us of God. We have the eyes of our under- 
standing enlightened, that we may see and know the 
truth. Yet this spiritual vision is not perfected all 
at once. Like the blind man who was healed by our 
Lord and beheld men as trees walking, at first we 
do not see spiritual things in exact proportion; 
gradually the vision becomes more clear, and we see 
plainly. 

From every aspect, then, baptism is the he gin- 
ning of God's work with the soul. He works by 
evolution here, as He works in nature. God begins 
the new creation; man must carry it on in its later 



^ Dix : The Sacramental System. 



THE BAPTISMAL GIFT 



165 



development. His the original gift; onrs the priv- 
ilege and responsibility of using it. His the planting 
of the seed; ours the work of tending and watering 
it, until it bursts into bloom and brings forth fruit to 
perfection. 



166 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



HOW me one sentence in the Bible which clearly 



and definitely enjoins the baptism of infants, 
and I will at once withdraw all opposition to the cus- 
tom. But Yon cannot do this; you cannot point to a 
single passage as proof of your position. Some such 
challenge as this used to be made frequently by Bap- 
tists. The world changes. In these days too many 
people are absolutely indifferent about baptism, infant 
or adult, to make such a challenge. The whole sub- 
ject, does it not, resolves itself into a question of reve- 
lation. Have we a divinely revealed religion or have 
we not? Once the authority of Scripture is recog- 
nized, as an actual unveiling of God's mind and 
purpose in redemption, there can be no question as 
to the importance of baptism. It will be the purpose 
of this chapter to show that scriptural authority for 
infant baptism^ is just as clear. 

A fundamental error in his conception of the 
Bible is revealed in the challenge of our Baptist 
friend. In a later chapter it will be pointed out that 
the New Testament was not written to give men 



XVIII. 



INFANT BAPTISM 




INFANT BAPTISM 



167 



their first knowledge of the principles and practices 
of Christianity. It was written for those who had 
already been instructed in the faith and had no need 
therefore of plain injunctions about fundamentals 
which were everywhere received. The Bible is not 
a book which is intended to give people their first 
ideas about the Christian religion. ^"^All that people 
need to be taught first is assumed as already known, 
all, for example, that is contained in our Creed and 
Catechism. This is not taught, but referred to. The 
books of the Few Testament were intended to remind 
men of what they already knew, to recall it to their 
minds, and to build them up in further knowledge 
of it.^^ ^ One has only to glance at such texts as St. 
Luke i. 4; I Cor. xi. 2, 23 ; xv. 1-4; II St. Peter i. 12, 
and many others, to see plainly that this is so. 

There are many things, therefore — and often 
things of the first importance — which we shall not 
find directly and explicitly stated in the Bible. The 
very things which were universally accepted and every- 
where practised, which nobody denied or misunder- 
stood and about which there was no dispute, would be 
the things the Scripture writers would not find them- 
selves often called upon to mention. We must turn 
to Christian tradition to learn that the early Church 
practised these things. We shall expect only inci- 
dental references to them in Scripture, references 
that would not be satisfactory by themselves but are 
perfectly plain when read in the light of the Church's 
tradition. 

^ Gore : The Creed of the Christian. 



168 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



To take an instance : there is no injunction in the 
Isew Testament to keep Sunday instead of the Sab- 
bath^ yet we find incidental references that prove the 
practice most conclusively; as^ when we read that 
such and such a thing happened when the disciples 
were met together on the first day of the week^ to 
break bread — a proof not only that the first day was 
kept^ but an indication as to how it was observed, 
namely, by the celebration of the Holy Communion. 
Again, admitting the change from the Sabbath, there 
is no direct commandment that Sunday shall be kept 
by common public worship ; all Christians knew that 
it should be so observed, and the practice was so gen- 
eral that only when some began to neglect it do we 
see any reference to the subject. Even then the inci- 
dental reference is stronger than a direct injunction, 
as when the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says : 
^Torsake not the assembling of yourselves together, 
as the manner of some is.^^ 

So it is with infant baptism. A study of Chris- 
tian tradition shows that it has always been practised 
in the Church; there never was a time, in the early 
days, when anybody dreamed of denying it. Under 
the old covenant infants had been admitted by cir- 
cumcision to Church membership and naturally they 
were admitted under the new. There is no direct 
command about it in the New Testament writings, 
because it is assumed as already known and practised. 
It is both taken for granted and commanded in the 
New Testament that all persons are to be bap- 
tized, and unless one can produce a definite command 



INFANT BAPTISM 



169 



excluding infants from the rite it must be concluded 
that we should permit them to be partakers of it. 

Now what do we find in Holy Scripture ? (i) Our 
Lord, having shown His good will toward children 
(St. Mark x. 14), gave commandment to go and 
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them (St. 
Matthew xxviii. 19). (u) In the first Christian ser- 
mon St. Peter says : ^^Eepent and be baptized, for the 
promise is to you and to your children^^ (Acts ii. 
38-39). (Hi) There is record of the baptism of three 
entire households (Acts xvi. 15, 33; I. Cor. i. 16). 
(iv) In the epistles, addressed to baptized persons, 
children are exhorted, as well as adults (Ephesians 
vi. 1; Colossians iii. 20) as being Church members. 

Considering, therefore, the custom of the Jewish 
Church, and adding to that the universal interpreta- 
tion of the matter by the Christian Church, for fifteen 
centuries, those who deny infant baptism should show : 
(i) That Christ meant to exclude children; (ii) that 
St. Peter meant the same; (m) that there were no 
children in the three households, where all were bap- 
tized; (iv) that the children addressed as Christians 
in St. PauFs epistles were not really baptized. 

The truth is, the denial of infant baptism arises 
from a misunderstanding of the sacrament itself. 
People confound conversion and regeneration, and 
because they make conversion the only absolutely 
necessary thing and baptism a mere symbolic rite 
through which one professes that he has been con- 
verted, infants (as not having passed through this 



170 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



experience) are denied the sacrament. The Church, 
however, has always taught that baptism is a new 
birth, that in it we are given the germ of a higher life, 
and that while with adnlts there must be a real turn- 
ing to God to make this grace effectual, infants, as not 
being able to oppose any obstacle to the grace, may 
receive it and will find as years go on that it helps 
in that gradual turning of the soul to God which is 
just as true a conversion as is any sudden and violent 
change of heart in one who has been aroused from 
a life of deliberate sin against Him. 

In other words, we must grasp the fact shown in 
the last chapter, that baptism is two things : (t) the 
sacramental means by which sin is washed away ; and 
(ii) a new birth into a life of grace. Having that 
clear in our minds, we shall see that the infant needs 
both these blessings : (i) It is born subject to sin and 
should therefore have this sinful inheritance washed 
away; (ii) it needs, too, the new birth, the being 
'^^buried with Christ'^, the transplanting into a new 
soil where spiritual graces may grow and spiritual 
fruit be ripened. We all inherit from our first fore- 
father Adam a weakened and tainted nature; we are 
to receive from our Lord, the second Adam, the rem- 
edy for this evil. As we received our first birth and 
its attendant evils in an unconscious state, there 
would seem to be nothing unreasonable in our recep- 
tion of the second birth and its attendant blessings 
while in the same unconscious, infantile condition.^ 

^ See Sadler: Church Doctrine Bible Truth. As to our 
fallen nature, see chapter nine of this book. 



INFANT BAPTISM 



171 



Two points need yet to be emphasized, before we 
close, as touching the arguments of those who reject 
this doctrine. The first objection is that it is out- 
rageous to our moral perceptions to ask us to believe 
that unbaptized infants are lost. The second is that 
it makes too great a demand upon our intelligence to 
believe that an unconscious child can receive a spir- 
itual gift or blessing, since moral strength comes as a 
response to moral effort. 

As to the first objection: The point is not that all 
infants are lost who have not been baptized. The 
Church has never pronounced on that question. Vari- 
ous opinions have been held as to the spiritual 
condition of children dying unbaptized ; according to 
none, however, is it now held that such children are 
lost in the sense of eternal condemnation. Some 
years ago the Eev. James Richmond, a brilliant but 
eccentric priest of the American Church, was holding 
services in a new town in the far west. As usual a 
large proportion of the children in the new settlement 
were unbaptized and Mr. Richmond was preaching 
about the necessity of the sacrament. Suddenly he 
paused in his sermon and said: "I am sometimes 
asked what will become of the children who die unbap- 
tized. Standing in this pulpit and clothed with the 
Churches authority, I am not permitted to pronounce 
any judgment on the subject, because it is a mystery 
on which the Church has never been guided to speak. 
But^^ — and here he threw off his surplice and stole, 
left the pulpit and walked down into the middle of the 
church — "But,^^ he continued, "I can now speak as 



172 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



plain J ames Richmond alone, and I will give you my 
answer. Will unbaptized children be saved? Yes, 
I believe they will. My gravest doubts are about 
the parents who kept them from the sacrament.^^ 

On the ground of probability alone (and in other 
matters probability is a guide in life) a careful and 
conscientious parent will desire to bring his children 
to baptism. If in that sacrament there is promised 
a gift of new life, though he may not himself see the 
reasonableness of the promise, he will not wish to 
take any chances ; he will gladly give his children the 
"^^benefit of the doubt^^ As plain matter of fact, how- 
ever, for one case where parents withhold their little 
ones from baptism because of conscientious objections 
to the practice, there are dozens where the neglect 
of the sacrament is purely a matter of religious 
indolence and negligence. With such parents, Mr. 
Eichmond^s language is none too strong. 

As to the second objection, we reply: The fact 
that children are capable of receiving the grace of 
baptism seems clearly evident from our Lord's words 
to the disciples who rebuked those who brought little 
children to Him that He should touch them. If 
children could receive a blessing from Him when He 
was on earth, who shall deny that they can receive it 
now? In three of the Gospels we have instances of 
children thus brought to Christ, that by His "touch- 
ing^' or '^^laying His hands on them'' they might 
receive a spiritual blessing. What makes the analogy 
to baptism peculiarly significant is that this blessing 
was to be received through an outward symbol or 



INFANT BAPTISM 



173 



sign. Our Lord was indignant when the disciples 
would have sent the little ones away. He insisted on 
receiving and blessing them, though they were uncon- 
scious of the significance of what was being done for 
them. What right have we to think that His indig- 
nation is not aroused at the lack of faith in those who 
would keep back children from Him in these days? 
In baptism He touches the little ones, and His touch 
stirs in them a new life: who shall refuse them this 
great gift, because they must receive it unconsciously, 
seeing that their natural life was given them in the 
same state? 

One thought more, and we close this chapter : If 
life is given, it must also be sustained. Baptism is 
a new birth. After birth there must be provision for 
the maintenance of life. This is just what the Church 
does in requiring that there be sponsors for the child 
who is to be baptized. Eegeneration has just been 
compared to the transplanting of a seed from soil in 
which it could not take nourishment to another in 
which it may bear fruit. But as light, heat, and 
air are necessary for the growth and formation of the 
seed life, so the light of God in the knowledge of 
Christ, the warmth of the Church in the fellowship 
of the saints, the divine atmosphere taken in and 
breathed out by prayer, are necessary for the growth 
of the soul, and the Church requires certain guaran- 
tees that these will be provided. That guarantee is 
given in the solemn pledge of the sponsors, who are 
provided as sureties to see that as children grow to 



174 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



years of discretion they shall know the meaning of 
their religion and the seriousness of their responsi- 
bility'. Of course, the parents may act if god-parents 
cannot possibly be had but this ought never to be 
done except in case of absolute necessity. The parents 
are the child's sponsors by nature. There could be 
little reason in their formally taking the responsibility 
upon themselves at the baptismal service, inasmuch 
as the responsibility is theirs already. Their spiritual 
duties as the parents by nature are exactly vhat they 
vrould be taking upon themselves as parents by grace, 
god-parents. TThere they may be had, therefore, other 
sponsors are required, so that should the parents die 
or fail in their duty someone may be under obligation 
to look after the religious well-being of the child 
and see to its proper training in the life of the Church. 
It may be questioned whether baptism should ever be 
administered without the assurance that the grace 
given will not be neglected. Far better that the child 
should be left to God's *'uncovenanted mercies" — that 
is, His mercies of which we are reasonably sure, 
though they are not set forth as promises or covenants. 

Sacramental grace never does away with indi- 
vidual responsibility. We must see that children 
receive the grace which is promised to all who are 
admitted into the Church by baptism; but we are 
under an equal obligation to see that they are taught 
to appropriate and use the grace for the up-building 
of their Christian life. Xeither baptism nor any 
other sacrament is a magical charm working apart 
from human effort. 



THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE 175 



XIX. 

THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE 

RELIGIOUS workers in army camps learned 
something about worship^ if they had open 
minds. They discovered that there was just one 
service which had wonderful popularity with the men^ 
wonderful power and impressiveness. Chaplains of 
almost every religious name have testified to the fact. 
Letters from camp and from the front told of gather- 
ings where men have been hushed into deepest rever- 
ence. The services which they describe — now for a 
few gathered at an early hour in a Y. M. C. A. hut; 
now for many hundreds at a midnight service Christ- 
mas eve ; now for men with serious faces and solemn 
thoughts just before going ^^over the top^^ — are not 
^^services of song" or ^^prayer meetings with pep in 
them'^ or ^^camouflaged preaching" under the guise of 
a motion picture entertainment or ^^intoned matins 
with a sung Te Deum'\ The service which always 
grips men's souls is the Lord's own service^ the Holy 
Communion. Whether it were a quiet communion 
for a few wounded men, or a mass for the dead back 
of the Flanders battle line, or a night service near the 



176 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



trenches^ or a more formal celebration in one of the 
chnrclies that had escaped utter ruin^ the one service 
that always went straight to the heart was the service 
which commemorates the world's great sacrifice, the 
Calvary tragedy that ended in the Easter triumph. 
The men always showed that they loved it. They 
cannot tell why, but love it they do. And there is so 
much in the service it is small wonder they cannot 
explain why it stirs them. They "sense'' its power 
without knowing how or why. 

The pity of it is that so many of them had to go 
through the horror of war before they could discover 
what worship is, how real its comfort and its strength. 
The pity is, again, that the Churches have failed to 
tell much of the meaning of the Lord's own service or 
to put it in its rightful place in public worship. Even 
the Eoman Catholics, who have at least done this 
much, have smothered the service under a mass of 
puerile ceremonies, surrounded it with tawdriness and 
by rendering it in an unknown tongue detracted from 
its human helpfulness. The pity, still more, is that 
multitudes of people, when they have had any teach- 
ing whatever about the great service of the Christian 
Church, have had only controversial teaching. The 
Churches have been so busy explaining what it is not 
that they have forgotten to show what it is. 

It is one of the great tragedies of Christian histon- 
that the Holy Eucharist ever became the subject 
of so much theological dispute. That this which was 
given by our Lord as a ^T)lest sacrament of unity" 
should be made a centre of strife and discord is one 



THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE 177 



of the saddest sights of our disunited Christendom. 
Perhaps if we were satisfied to think of the doctrine 
of the Eucharist rather in its broad general prin- 
ciples^ the very simplicity of such a consideration 
would make the beauty and reasonableness of the 
truth so apparent that there would be less room for 
disagreement. It is not^ therefore^ the purpose of 
this and the following chapters to study the subject 
much in detail; we are rather to look at it in this 
simpler way^ in the hope of stating the primitive 
teaching in modern language with as little reference 
as possible to the opposing theories of the different 
schools. 

Even though we try to empty the sacrament of all 
mystery^ it is yet the dying request of a loving Friend. 
Jesus Christ was so thoroughly human. He had all 
our human longing not to be forgotten. While^, of 
course, He desired to be remembered for our sakes, 
not for His own. He did ask to be remembered. If 
the Holy Communion were nothing more than this, 
we should at leart be obedient to the Lord's last re- 
quest. What kind of a son is he who would forget the 
last expressed wish of his mother? What kind of a 
friend is he who forgets his friend's dying desire ? ^ 

But the sacrament is much more than this and the 
Church has always felt it to be much more, however 
men have differed in their interpretation of its larger 
meaning. One much-forgotten aspect of the service 
it will be the purpose of this chapter to explain. To 



^ See my Back to Christ, chapter iv. 



178 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



many Cliristians it is a sacrificial seirice. How, then, 
can it be so regarded ? "Wliat do we mean by eucha- 
ristic sacrifice ? In order to explain we must go back 
to first principles. 

The element of sacrifice is absolutely essential to 
the spirit of worship. Just as we endeavor to show 
OTir love for parents or brethren or friends by giving 
them something, by gladly putting ourselves to little 
inconveniences for their sakes, by surrendering cher- 
ished desires and possessions to show them our inter- 
ested and thoughtful affection — so we try to express 
our love for God by giving Him of our substance or 
our time^ by bending our wills to His desires and 
cheerfully devoting ourselves, body and soul, to all 
that may give Him glory and honor among men. 
This leads us to make our offerings to Him, of what- 
ever sort they may be, just as children pluck a fiower 
from some plant in the garden, something they them- 
selves have cared for and tended, that they may give 
it to some loved friend or relative. 

Such is the principle of sacrifice apart from sin. 
Through the fall, however, it has become more than 
this : for what men should have presented in glad love 
and full communion with God, they must bring to 
Him now in penitence and shame, in the hope of 
restoring the fellowship they have lost and as a pro- 
pitiation for the offenses which have broken that 
fellowship. In all nations the world over, therefore, 
we find this new instinct of sacrifice as a means of 
securing the renewed favor of the deity. Corn and 



THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE 179 



wine and oil and fruits and flowers are offered the 
offended divinity; birds and beasts are slain by thou- 
sands and burned^ that the odor may be a sweet smell- 
ing savor for their god; human victims, even, are 
hurried to the altar, that their death may be the 
means of saving others. Horrible as the heathen 
sacrifices were, they witness to the natural religious 
instinct of the race, the endeavor of men to atone 
for sin and do worthy, sacrificing service for their 
deities. 

When God selected out of the nations a people for 
His name. He responded to this instinct of worship 
by authorizing a most elaborate system of sacrifices. 
What came now, not in gratitude alone but as man^s 
acknowledgment of sin, was taken by God, freed of 
impurity, and used by Him to educate His people 
into a realization of the awfulness of sin, of their 
just separation from Him who is all-holy, and of the 
need of some better sacrifice that could make them 
unblamable and acceptable in His sight. This was 
the meaning of all the bloody offerings that made the 
Jewish temple almost a great butchery. It was all 
intended to make men feel how dreadful sin was and 
how much they needed some sacrifice and propitiation 
to place God and themselves at one again. 

Then when the need was felt, and felt deeply, 
God supplied it. The blood of bulls and goats could 
never take away sin; the efficacy of these sacrifices 
lay in their union with what was yet to come; their 
offering was continued as leading up to and prepar- 
ing men to receive the one great sacrifice. God was 



180 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



waiting during these times of preparation and finally 
He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to be 
the real propitiation for our sins. Christy by His 
sacrifice on the cross^ culminating a life of sacrifice 
and obedience^ forever redeemed us from sin and 
death and gained for us the gift of everlasting life. 

It is worth noting, in passing (note this as a 
very important parenthetical paragraph), that as our 
Lord^s sacrificial death must be accepted by us in 
faith, it is implied that we cannot plead the death on 
our behalf unless we are trying to correspond to the 
life. Our sacrifice must not be the bare offering of 
another^s merit, it must be an offering of ourselves, 
with all the powers of soul and body, in union with 
the sacrifice of Calvary. 

To resume the main thought : The sacrifice of the 
cross, while it was one, perfect, and sufficient, did not 
end on the first Good Friday. He who was priest and 
victim passed into the heavenly courts and there per- 
petually pleads the merits of His earthly life and 
death, offering continually His blood shed for sinners. 
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews explains 
this heavenly oblation, by its ante-type, the entrance 
of the high priest into the holy of holies on the Day 
of Atonement. As the Jewish high priest, when the 
victim had been slain, entered within the veil and 
offered the blood, sprinkling it on the mercy seat, so 
Christ entered into heaven itself now to appear in 
the presence of God for us and there as our great 
High Priest to plead His blood as of a lamb without 
spot or blemish, the Lamb slain from the foundation 



THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE 181 



of the world. Although He is forever seated there, 
as one whose toils are over, yet He is a Spriest upon 
His throne^ and is perpetually engaged in presenting 
on our behalf the life which He once for all laid 
down, and has taken again, and never needs to lay 
down from henceforth/^ 

Now at last we have reached our point and can 
see how the Eucharist has sacrificial meaning and its 
celebrant a priestly character. The same oflEering 
which our Lord makes in heaven is pleaded by His 
priests as they accomplish His service on earth. 
He instituted and ordained these holy mysteries as 
pledges of His love and for a continual remembrance 
or memorial of His death. Here at His altar, ^Ve 
set forth His death, we lift it up on high, we magnify 
it as our only boast, our chief glory, our one hope. 
And in so doing the veil between heaven and earth 
is lifted, and we find ourselves one with Him in 
that ceaseless presentation of Himself for us in the 
inexhaustible virtue of His past suffering.^^ ^ 

There have been endless discussions as to whether 
the offering of the Eucharist is to be connected with 
the heavenly oblation, or with the immolation of 
Calvary. Possibly the truth lies in the union of both 
thoughts. The one great sacrifice of the cross is 
lifted up on high by our Lord in heaven and by 
means of that sacrament which He puts in our hands 
we plead it also on earth; and yet as the satisfac- 
tion of the cross lay in the obedience even unto death. 



^ Mason : The Faith of the Gospel. 



182 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



so ttie gifts of the altar^ the broken bread and the 
outpoured wine^, mystically reproduce the dissolution 
of soul and body in which the passion of our Lord 
had its climax and close. When the priest at the altar 
breaks the consecrated bread and offers it, he lifts up 
the same broken body that hung on the cross, and 
re-presents the oblation of Calvary. 

The Eucharist is a sacrifice^ then — a commem- 
orative and representative sacrifice, but a sacrifice 
nevertheless, in which there is a real offering. As tlie 
service of the Day of Atonement was incomplete if it 
stopped with the killing of the victim and reached 
its perfection in the sprinkling of the blood and the 
pleading of the high priest within the veil, so Chrisf s 
sacrifice must be pleaded in heaven and offered for 
the souls of men on earth. Both actions are essen- 
tially sacrificial and in their union man finds his 
cravings satisfied and his restored union with God 
made possible. 

One cannot close without showing the practical 
value of this thought. The J ewish high priest, when 
he went in unto the holy place, bore the names of the 
children of Israel on the breast plate of judgment for 
a memorial before the Lord continually. And our 
great High Priest, the Son of God, now gone to the 
presence of the Father to offer the avails of His sac- 
rifice, bears on His heart our names, too. What He 
does in heaven He enables His priests to do here. 
Everj^ Eucharist offered at His altar gives opportunity 
for special remembrance, so that by offering it with 



THE EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE 183 



intention the merits of our Lord^s atoning death may 
be pleaded for each of ns individually and as petition 
after petition rises to the throne of grace each pleads 
for US all that Christ did and does, each becomes a 
means of special blessing. 

Are we using our altars in this way, as we should? 
Let us picture the ideal of what a church should be. 
Sunday after Sunday, and day after day, as its doors 
are opened, we see our people coming together, eager 
to enter God^s house and to kneel before His altar. 
We read their hearts and find that each has its own 
trial, or trouble, or joy; we know that each is coming 
to spread this before the Lord. Here is a woman 
whose son is careless, thoughtless, unbelieving. Long 
ago he ceased to observe his religious duties and the 
mother^s heart is pained at his increasing indifference. 
Here is a man whose business has been troubling and 
pressing him for months, who knows not where to 
turn as the difficulties thicken from day to day. Here 
are others in whose family life there are dark shad- 
ows, the curse of drink or the evil breath of immo- 
rality has touched some one of the members of the 
home circle and the others are heavy-hearted. Or 
there are some with near friends or relatives danger- 
ously ill, or under the dark shadow of sorrow, or in 
the stress of some personal trouble, battling with 
doubt or struggling with temptation. During the 
years of war how many anxious or sorrowing hearts 
have come through that open church door! Others 
are here as full of joy as these are of pain — ^thankful 
for some special mark of God^s love and favor and 



184 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



coming with light hearts and glad voices to join in the 
praises of the Church. 

The great fact which the Holy Eucharist brings 
home to ns is that in their sorrow or rejoicing they 
are not alone. The priest at the altar has not been 
left to guess at their needs or blessings. They have 
taken him into their confidence^ have told him the 
evil and the good together^ and they know that their 
names are on his lips and in his heart as with uplifted 
hands he petitions the throne of grace. Those who 
are in sorrow have not come here to pray alone, as 
they struggle out of their darkness into light — they 
can pray so at home. They have come to plead the 
merits of their Eedeemer^ to be present at the lifting 
up of His sacrifice; they have asked the priest, when 
He makes the oblation, to offer it for them, with 
special intention. They are not alone, the Eucharist 
has been made theirs, the merits of Christ's atoning 
death have been pleaded for each individually, 
and together with the intercessions of Christ in 
heaven the prayers of the congregation, being united 
in this offering, have ascended for each one. None 
has been forgotten, none overlooked. 

This is our ideal of a church in use. Can we not 
do something to make the ideal a reality ? 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 



185 



XX. 

THE HOLY COMMUNION 

HE tragic blunder of Protestantism has been its 



1 failure to make the Lord^s own service the cen- 
tral act of worship on the Lord's own day. The tragic 
blunder of Eomanism has been its fatal emphasis on 
the sacrificial aspect of the service to the neglect of 
communion. 

The Holy Eucharist is easily the most intelligible 
and popular because it is the most dramatic and 
appealing service of all the many methods of Chris- 
tian worship. That must have been apparent to any 
one who read the last chapter carefully. But the 
service is not only dramatic and appealing, it is also 
so intensely human. It is all this, because it is com- 
munion and fellowship with a Lord and Leader. It 
is communicated character. Goodness is the one thing 
we cannot keep to ourselves. This service is the 
Lord's way of communicating His goodness to us.^ 

In the last chapter we found that Christ's offering 
of Himself on Calvary, to be effectual, must be lifted 

^ See my Experiment of Faith, chapter xiii. 




186 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



up in heaven and pleaded for the souls of men on 
earth. Both actions are essentially sacrificial and in 
their union man finds a satisfaction for sin and the 
possibility of restored fellowship with God. But 
while the sacrifice makes our reunion with God pos- 
sible, it is the feeding upon the sacrifice that makes 
it actual. We turn then to the thought of com- 
munion in the Eucharist. 

To have not merely the remission of sin and the 
removal of the barrier that kept him from God, but 
on his restoration to have sensible fellowship with the 
Almighty — this also is one of man^s natural religious 
instincts. He desires to commune with the divinity 
he worships, to hold converse with God and to have 
some sensible token that God holds intercourse mth 
him. 

So we find in all religions some effort toward 
realizing this communion. The Jews had their sacri- 
ficial feasts, when offerings were made to God and 
then partaken of, in part by the offerer and in part 
by the priest as the representative of God — thus 
showing that God had accepted the offering and in 
token of restored friendship was now sitting at the 
same board with the pardoned offender. Outside the 
covenant, there were like feasts where men met 
together to sup with the gods they worshipped. These 
were all efforts at satisfying man^s craving for divine 
communion — poor efforts indeed, following exagger- 
ated and degraded notions about the deity, ending 
often in disaster (for what should have been offerings 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 



187 



of perfect love and purity became dmnken revels and 
lewd debauches) but efforts nevertheless. Behind all 
the awful degradation of heathen worship, as back 
of all the formalism of the Jewish service, there was 
a real truth, a truth that voiced the instinct of every 
human breast, the desire of man for fellowship, 
communion, and intercourse with His Maker. 

When our Lord Christ came to found His king- 
dom and to establish the perfect religion. He pro- 
vided a supreme way of satisfying this need as He 
satisfied all the needs of men. His incarnate pres- 
ence — God with us — made it easier to understand 
that man could come into personal touch with his 
Maker. All this we saw in the chapters on God's 
presence and personality as made known in Christ's 
unveiling of deity. But the gift did not cease when 
Christ was ^^received up in glory". Before His depar- 
ture He instituted the Eucharist as the means by 
which we may meet with Him now. Henceforth men 
were not merely to sup with God, they were to feed 
on God. As He nourished their bodies, so now He 
would nourish their souls. He sent from heaven the 
True Bread that giveth life to the world, that those 
who were His might feed upon Him and not die. "If 
any man eat of this bread he shall live forever; for 
whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath 
eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.'' 

As showing how we have here the fulfilment of 
what man's natural religious instinct had taught him 
to strive for, it is interesting to trace in what Liv- 
ingston and others tell us of the customs of savage 



188 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



tribes^ how ^^sl persuasion has existed in the world 
that to receive a man^s bloody i, e., his nature, is to 
have the potentiality of being made like him^^ and 
how ^*the further conviction has arisen that if we 
would be made like the gods we must receive their 
blood, or in some other way hold intercommunion 
with them/* ^ That which man had been feeling after 
in all parts of the world and expressing in blood cove- 
nants was now to be set forth in such memorable terms 
as could never be forgotten. As men had supposed 
themselves united to a stranger and becoming his 
brother through the drinking or commingling of blood 
in solemn covenant, so (shadow growing into sub- 
stance) they were indeed to become united to the Son 
of God by the drinking of His blood and the reception 
of His nature. 

It is, then, a gracious love feast to which we are 
invited — to which, indeed, we are commanded — and 
to which we must come if we would live ; for ^'^except 
we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His 
blood we have no life in us.^^ 

Emphasis should be laid upon the necessity for 
coming in the right spirit, with the earnest desire to 
receive the very nature of our Lord Himself. By this 
is meant not merely coming after a certain formal 
preparation, but rather that there must be a real 
desire to identify one^s self with the sacrifice of Christ 
both in His life and in His death. The important 



' Walpole: Vital Religion. 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 



189 



thing in any preparation for communion is this iden- 
tification of the worshipper with his Lord^ this sin- 
cere resolve to correspond to His great sacrifice by 
offering our lives a willing service and sacrifice in 
return. Coming thus^ we are sure never to go away 
disappointed. At the altar^ if our own offering of 
self has been sincere^, we may always be certain of 
receiving the very substance and virtue of our Lord's 
soul and body. The gift is mutual. We must really 
and honestly try to give of ourselves, knowing that if 
we make the offering Christ in response actually gives 
us of Himself, that so we may have strength to 
complete and perfect in deed what we have thus 
dedicated in will. It is the absence of such a spirit 
that has made Holy Communion so unreal and arti- 
ficial for ourselves and often for others an act of 
Pharisaical hypocrisy. Sometimes, with distress, one 
looks at those who come forward for communion in 
church and fails to see any indication of the spirit of 
sacrifice. There is rather — God forgive us if it be 
uncharitable to say it — a certain air of smugness and 
self-satisfaction which does much to keep others away. 

Yet we know the gift is there for those who come 
aright to receive it. We know, whether we can under- 
stand it or not. We look at those around us, and 
recognize at once the ones who have been fed. One 
can almost certainly pick out those who make "good 
communions^^ — communions where they receive of 
our Lord because they give of themselves. Other men 
have a measure of religious fervor, of goodwill toward 
men and love to God, but these despite occasional 



190 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



faults rise to greater heights; they live and move in 
a higher sphere: they love more than other people, 
they can do more. They have been fed with heavenly 
food, and in their lives they shovr a celestial strength 
and beauty. 

Holy Communion is the great fact of the Church's 
life; it is an essential part of the Christian worship. 
The prayers and praises of the Church lack vitality 
without it, the efforts of individual Christians come 
to nothing apart from it. It is the center and source 
of our religious life, without which all the rest is a 
mere shell. AYe do not live in the flesh without bodily 
nourishment, nor do we really live in the spirit if we 
have not the food that sustains the spiritual life. 
AYe cannot come to the table of the Lord too often, 
if we come with due preparation and in the spirit of 
mutual sacrifice ; it is a privilege to be accepted gladly, 
though with reverence and humility and awe. The 
early disciples continued daily in the breaking of 
the bread, daily they knelt at the sacred board, and 
the highest ideal of the Christian life to-day is not less 
than it was then. At least we can let no Lord's Day 
pass without our presence at the sacred feast and we 
ought to aim at a time when we may receive each 
Sundav, makincr everv week a round of thankful 
remembrance of the blessed gift and solemn antici- 
pation of its renewal. 

It sometimes is asked, why Churchmen celebrate 
the Holy Eucharist so often: whether it does not 
detract from the solemn character of the feast to hold 
it with such frequency. As well ask whether we are 



THE HOLY COMMUNION 



191 



not in danger of praying too often. Is there anything 
more solemn than prayer ? In it the sonl meets God 
face to face. Yet no one would dream of praying 
only at long intervals from fear lest this solemn act 
of supplication should lose its reality because of the 
frequency of its repetition. Now the Holy Eucharist 
is a prayer in action; it pleads with God and by 
^^showing forth His death till He come^^ pleads in the 
name of Christ. This it does on its sacrificial side; 
and then the communion is the immediate response 
of God to the prayer. While one should not come to 
the Eucharist without due care and reverence;, our 
very presence^, though we do not communicate, is 
something (though it is not everything), and as we 
join in the frequent offering we gain the spirit of 
sacrifice that will enable us to prepare more often for 
worthy reception. 

All this, if we once grasp the thought of what 
the Eucharist really means as a feast and supper as 
well as an offering. It means life and happiness and 
union with Christ; it means the continued washing 
and cleansing of soul and body ; it means refreshment 
and peace ; it means the gradual change of the recip- 
ient into the likeness of Him whom he receives; it 
means the constant abiding of Christ in us ; it means 
that He whom the heavens cannot contain will come 
to us and make us His temple, full of the beauty 
of His holiness and transformed into the image of 
His glory. 



192 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XXI. 



THE EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE 



HE Holy Commimion is the center and source 



a real feeding on Christ^s Body and Blood, not merely 
a subjective contemplation of His divine character 
and His earthly work. The Eucharist is something 
more than a symbol and assurance of Christ^ s 
presence and activity on our behalf in heavenly 
places; it is the appointed means of His actual pres- 
ence with us here on earth. We look next, then, at 
the doctrine of the Real Presence, as the exposition 
of the third great fact in this central act of Christian 
worship. 

As men have always longed for restored fellowship 
and communion with God, so have they always longed 
to realize His presence with them. It is not enough 
for them to know that He is everywhere, that He is 
immanent in nature, that His power manifests itself 
equally in the sweep of a planet in its orbit and the 
trembling of a leaf on its stem. Men want a partic- 
ular presence of God with them and in their poor 
efforts at worship they have always sought to find such 




It is all this because it is 



THE EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE 193 



a presence. That is the meaning of the idol worship 
of the heathen in all its forms ; for there, as always, 
the origin of the false religion lies in the exaggeration 
of a half-perceived religions truth. Men were so 
anxious for a special manifestation of the presence of 
God that they erected some object of devotion as 
reminding them of such presence, and then in time 
identified the object itself with the presence it was 
supposed to indicate. 

If we believe the Jewish worship to be anything 
other than a humanly developed system — if it is 
actually a God-directed worship — then we see how 
He responded to this longing of men for His pres- 
ence. The mysterious Shekinah was a special mani- 
festation of God. The presence between the cherubim 
that overshadowed the mercy seat was God^s reply to 
man^s prayer for a special unveiling of His glory. 

When the new covenant, the Christian dispensa- 
tion, succeeded the old, surely we should not expect 
God to deny a like privilege to men. Eather, an 
unspeakably greater blessing was bestowed upon them. 
God became incarnate; His special presence with 
human nature became a personal union that was to 
last forever: the Word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us. Where Christ was, there God was. The 
apostles saw with their eyes, their hands actually 
handled the Word of Life. 

Once more, when Christ the God-man left earth 
for heaven He did not wholly withdraw Himself from 
us. We cannot believe that He would give so great 
a blessing, only to take it away. Christ is yet with 



194 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



His people. AVliere two or three are gathered together 
in His Xame. there is He in the midst of them. More- 
over^ He has sent the Spirit to tabernacle with ns^ to 
make each one of ns a temple where He may dwell, 
so that He inliabits the heart of a baptized believer 
as He does not dwell elsewhere. 

Finally, as a revelation of His special presence, 
our Lord has ordained the holy mystery of the Eucha- 
rist, in which as a pledge of His love He vouchsafes to 
come to US in a new way. It must be that He meant 
to assure us of such a presence, when at the Holy 
Supper He used such mysterious words. When He 
instituted the new feast — so we read — He took bread 
and blessed and brake it, saying to His disciples, "^This 
is My Body: this is My Blood. He spoke without 
qualification, as He had spoken to the Jews in Caper- 
naum a year before, when He told them that the bread 
which He would give was His flesh, which He would 
give for the life of the world. 

It is commonly objected to this view that our 
Lord's words here are purely figurative. Figurative 
they are, we may well suppose. Plainly so, for when 
He used the words ^^This is My Body ; this is My 
Blood,'' His body stood before them unimpaired and 
He was surely not speaking in the ordinary language 
of humdrum prose. The difficulty is that when men 
say that His language is figurative they seem to think 
that to call it so is to empty it of all meaning. 
Whereas nearly all spiritual language is figurative; its 
figurative character, however, warns us that the mean- 
ing to be conveyed is not less, but more. The figure 



THE EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE 195 



calls for a heavier burdening of the language, the 
soul of the words is charged with a greater mission. 
It is a figure of speech to speak of God as our Father ; 
yet in what words could the great truth that was to 
be told be better revealed than in those which bid us 
see in heaven the divine counterpart of fatherhood on 
earth ? Here, then, in the words which Christ uses of 
the Holy Supper, if the language be figurative it is 
not on that account emptied of meaning ; rather it is 
charged with richer thought. How tremendous must 
be the reality which needs such metaphor to express 
its meaning ! The inner conception must be at least 
as great as the figure itself. 

What our Lord said, then, the Church has always 
taught. She declares that when the bread and wine 
of the Eucharist are consecrated they become in some 
real, though mysterious, spiritual way, an actuality 
so great that we can speak of it only as the very Body 
and Blood of Christ Himself. She cannot explain 
how the change is made ; for Christ Himself did not 
explain it. When men object to the doctrine she 
can but repeat it in faith. She can say no more than 
her Lord and He but reiterated His words when the 
unbelieving disciples found His language too hard 
for them. So the Church has stated the fact. For 
a thousand years men were content to kneel before 
the sacred food, accepting that statement, believing 
though they could not understand. Then came the 
denial of the mystery by some who withdrew from the 
Church and placed themselves in hostile array against 



1% 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



her. Again this eucharistic concord was broken by 
those who in their anxiety to defend the doctrine 
forgot the truth that the figurative is the expression 
of the real and in an excessive insistence upon a lit- 
eral interpretation attempted to answer that question, 
^'^How?'^ to which our Lord at the outset declined to 
reply. In attempting to philosophize about the pres- 
ence the Eoman Church added to the Catholic teach- 
ing an attempted explanation of the way or manner in 
which Christ is present in the Eucharist. This met- 
aphysical explanation is called Transubstantiation. 
Suppose we all held and taught that a living man 
on earth is an entity composed of body and spirit and 
there most of us stopped. Then suppose some ven- 
turesome people went beyond this explanation, alleg- 
ing that the connecting link which united the two 
and made man a living being was the saline principle 
in the blood. Then suppose they were to insist that 
unless we accepted their own explanation of the mys- 
tery of life they would have no dealings with us. That 
is precisely what Eome has done in trying to define 
the eucharistic presence. Transubstantiation and the 
tery of life they would have no dealings with us. That 
one doctrine is an attempt to explain the other. While 
the Anglican Church has rejected the explanation, she 
holds carefully to the fact which it seeks to explain. 
In the philosophical language in which it is couched 
the Eoman doctrine is capable of an orthodox inter- 
pretation, but in the popular understanding of the 
term it overthrows the nature of a sacrament and 



THE EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE 197 



because of its slavish following of the literal leads 
to superstition and error. 

As to what we actually mean by the real presence^ 
however, a simple explanation will be found in the 
familiar parable of the magnet. Take a bar of steel 
and rub it with a lodestone. You cannot see any 
change in it, examine it as you will — it looks just 
what it was before and yet, as a matter of fact, it 
has become something more ; it is now a magnet, and 
in, with, and under the steel there exists a new power. 
So, in the Holy Eucharist, the bread and wine, after 
consecration, seem to be exactly what they were before 
and yet they, too, have become something more. Not 
ceasing to be materially what they were, they have 
become spiritually what they were not. There is, in, 
with, and under the material things, a spiritual real- 
ity, whose power can be received, whose influence felt. 

By the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist 
is meant that He is truly and really there. Eeal does 
not mean material. The most real things are the 
spiritual things. The most real thing about myself 
is not my body, but my soul, that thing that gives 
me individuality and makes me myself. And the 
most real thing about the Holy Eucharist is not the 
outward symbol, the bread and wine that we see, but 
the hidden presence, spiritual yet none the less actual, 
the presence of Him who promised to make this feast 
the means of communicating to us His own very life, 
His strength. His power; in short. Himself. 

We have in the Eucharist an exact counterpart 



198 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



of the Incarnation. Christ was God and without 
ceasing to be God He became man. He is hnman 
and at the same time He is divine. He exists as one 
person in the perfection of both natures. So the 
encharistic elements are bread and wine and at the 
same time they are the precious Body and Blood. 
They have not ceased to be the first by becoming the 
second; they are not less the second because they 
remain the first. It may be questioned whether^ in 
most cases^ those who refuse to believe in the fact of 
the eucharistic presence have ever seriously contem- 
plated the fact of the Incarnation^ have ever fully 
realized that Christ from the very moment of His 
conception was still God, that as He lay on Mary^s 
breast He was the Supreme Head of the universe, 
as He hung upon the cross dying in agony He was 
present in all creation ruling by His power. 

We, then, who believe in the Incarnation, believe 
also in the eucharistic extension of its blessings, we 
believe though we cannot understand or explain. 
^^Guided by Scripture,^^ says an Anglican theologian 
whose work is recommended by the Bishops of the 
American Church — ^^guided by Scripture, the Church 
establishes only those truths which Scripture reveals, 
and leaves the subject in that mystery in which God 
for His wise purposes has invested it. Taking as her 
immovable foundation the words of Jesus Christ, 
This is My Body,' 'This is My Blood,' and 'Whoso 
eateth My flesh and drinketh My Blood hath eternal 
life,' she believes that the Body or Flesh and the 
Blood of Jesus Christ, the Creator and Eedeemer of 



THE EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE 199 



the world, both God and man, united indivisibly in 
one person, are verily and indeed given to, taken, 
eaten, and received by the faithful in the Lord^s 
Supper, under the outward sign or form of bread and 
wine. She believes that the Eucharist is not the 
sign of an absent body, and that those who partake of 
it, receive not merely the figure, or shadow, or sign 
of Christ's Body, but the reality itself. And as 
Christ's divine and human natures are inseparably 
united, so she believes that we receive in the Eucha- 
rist not only the Flesh and Blood of Christ, but Christ 
Himself both God and man." ^ 

This is the grandeur and beauty of the altar. It 
is Christ's throne, where He waits to meet and bless 
His people. Here the Church's service reaches its 
fitting climax, so human is this sacrament, while yet 
so divine : so human, for the gift is hidden under nat- 
ural signs and veiled as being too bright for mortal 
eyes to gaze upon; so divine, for its mystic power 
seems ever ready to burst into a flame of glory. 
^^Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. 
This is none other but the house of God, and this is 
the gate of heaven." 



^ Palmer : On the Church, Part II., chapter vii. 



200 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XXII. 

PREPARATION FOR HOLY COMMUNION 

HOW should one prepare for Holy Commuriion ? 
What amount of preparation is necessary? If 
it is a thing so sacred and mysterious as the Church 
teaches^ coming to it ought to be seriously and 
solemnly considered. One is so afraid of coming 
unworthily. How shall we be sure we are not so 
coming? What is a "good^^ communion? These are 
questions often asked of every pastor who is trying to 
instruct his people in the Churches ways. 

It ought always to be said at once that a right 
approach to the Holy Communion means not so much 
coming after a formal preparation as coming in the 
spirit of sacrifice, with a genuine and hearty desire to 
live Christ^s life and be "crucified with Him^^ in His 
perfect offering of Himself, soul and body, to His 
Father. After all, as someone has said, since Holy 
Communion is above everything else food for the soul, 
we come to the altar because we are spiritually hun- 
gry. The fundamental preparation for communion 
is a life of such earnestness and unselfishness that 
one is compelled to come in order to receive grace and 



PREPARATION FOR HOLY COMMUNION 201 



strength to carry on this daily work. The best prep- 
aration for a worthy communion is ^^a life of service, 
so unselfish and exacting that it demands God, in 
order to live if 

Yet we need method here as in everything else. 
It is a great mistake to suppose that in religious 
things we need no plans and methods. What is left 
to be done on impulse is usually not done at all. We 
do indeed come to the Lord^s table because we need 
Him; but unless we take time to think about it we 
are likely to forget how great our need actually is; 
and in order to avoid vagueness it is well to have some 
particular form of thought and prayer for use before 
approaching the holy feast. Such forms are given us 
in every manual of devotion and it would be a safe 
rule for most of us to use at least that much of 
preparation before every communion. 

To say such offices, however, should be but a min- 
imum of devotion. There ought to be an effort to 
supplement this by some special thought and medi- 
tation of our own. Along these lines there are many 
methods that may be recommended. 

(1) For example, one way of preparation is by 
examination for sin. How often this consists simply 
of reading over the questions in a manual and men- 
tally acknowledging our faults under the several 
divisions. What we need, rather, is a serious search- 
ing of the heart for particular sins, with enough time 
given to this one single search to make the offense 
plain to one^s own conscience. We take a review of 
the week, asking ourselves if we have struggled 



2Q2 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



against any one particailar fault. Then we ask what 
sin we most need to fight against. Wliat is the sin 
I liave committed oftenest since my last comLiniinion? 
What is the fault I most hesitate to confess? What 
is the thing I should be most ashamed to have others 
know about ? What shames me most when I think of 
facing God at the judgment? So we take this sin^ 
and come to the Eucharist, asking strength to over- 
come it. and as we ask for the grace, resolving to make 
our own effort also. 

(2) Again, we may vary this method by fixing 
upon some sin and then with regard to that asking 
ourselves three questions as we look forward to our 
communion : Who is coming to me in this sacrament ? 
To whom is He coming? Why does He come? Sup- 
pose we have been struggling against a sharp temper. 
We ask: 

(i) Who is coming to me in this sacrament? My 
Lord Himself. He who suffered every indignity at 
the hands of His persecutors : who was struck in the 
face, spit upon, mocked, insulted; when He was 
reviled reviled not again, when He suffered He threat- 
ened not. He who as He hung on the cross, with the 
nails piercing His hands and feet, with every muscle 
wrung and wrenched as the cross sunk into its place, 
was able even in the agony of suffering to pray for 
those who tortured Him, ^'Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do.*' 

(ii) To vdiom is He coming? To me who pre- 
tend to be His follower, who have His sign upon me, 
who are named with His name and would be offended 



PREPARATION FOR HOLY COMMUNION 203 



if men did not call me a Christian — and yet cannot 
bear one trying word or slight^ spoke so sharply to 
such an one only yesterday lost my temper this morn- 
ing, am apt to criticize at the slightest provocation 
and say biting, sarcastic, angry things to the ones who 
love me most. 

(iii) And why does He come? To make me more 
like Himself, patient, sweet tempered, and kindly; 
strong and manly but with the gentleness which the 
First Gentleman always showed. 

We may vary the questions from week to week, 
taking one fault at a time. Suppose the sin be sloth- 
fulness in prayer. Then we put our three questions 
in some such form as this : 

(i) Who is coming? My Lord, who though He 
was often so pressed with work that He had not so 
much as time to eat and drink yet always found 
opportunity for devotion; rose a great while before 
it was day that He might be alone with His Father ; 
spent the whole night sometimes in intercession ; even 
on the cross, though suffering physical agony beyond 
description, used His last moments in prayer. 

(ii) To whom is He coming? To one who rose 
so late this morning that he had time only for a 
hurried sentence, said so unthinkingly that probably 
it never reached the ear of God ; to one who yesterday 
put off his devotions till night and then hurried over 
them when tired and half asleep; to one who needs 
grace so much to correct his many faults, and yet 
time and again neglects to pray for it. 

(iii) And why is He coming? To help me to 



204 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



realize His continual presence and in my prayers to 
speak to Him face to face. 

We take onr own sins, whatever they may be, and 
selecting one for each communion, ask these ques- 
tions, pausing over them in meditation, and then 
during the week after communion going back and 
in our nightly self-examination asking if we have 
improved in this one point. 

(3) Or suppose, before each communion we hit 
upon one duty which we shall try to perform more 
carefully, more eagerly, more lovingly. Suppose we 
find some one person we can help, some one act of 
usefulness we can perform, some one domestic kind- 
ness that may be cultivated, something in the busi- 
ness life or the social round in which we may apply 
our Christian principles, and then set ourselves ear- 
nestly to the task of doing this. By the time of our 
next communion it would create such a compelling 
need of God in our hearts that we should consider 
this Eucharist not a duty but an absolute necessity. 
^^Hard work will make a man hungry for his daily 
bread,^^ says the chaplain of one of our universities, 
^^and nothing but hard work and unselfish living 
will make a man hungry for God.^^ 

(4) Again, we may prepare for some Eucharist 
by passing to the thought of thanksgiving. One is 
apt to grow morbid over the searching for sin — how 
much brighter and sweeter will be our life if we also 
seek to remember the many things for which we 
should be grateful I Coming to communion with our 
hearts full because of some special blessing, we shall 



PREPARATION FOR HOLY COMMUNION 205 



find the thought of thanksgiving continually recur- 
ring throughout the whole Prayer Book service. In 
the prayer for the Church militant we ''give thanhs 
for all men^\ The absolution brings the thought of 
thankfulness for the forgiveness of the sins we have 
just confessed, and the comfortable words carry out 
that expression of gratitude; in the prayer of conse- 
cration we render hearty thanlcs for the innumerable 
benefits procured unto us by Christ^s passion, death, 
resurrection, and ascension, and we desire God to 
accept the offering as a sacrifice of praise and thanlcs- 
giving; and so throughout. 

(5) Or there is also the element of praise and wor- 
ship. For preparation some week it might be well to 
read over the service in order to fix upon certain ways 
of expressing this, praying meanwhile that God will 
give us the spirit of worship, the adoring spirit, that 
worship may become our chief joy here as it must 
be in heaven. The service begins with the prayer for 
the cleansing of our hearts that we may magnify 
God^s Holy Name ; the Sursum Corda and Sanctus lift 
us into the atmosphere of heavenly adoration; the 
prayer of consecration begins and ends with praise, 
^^AU glory be to Thee, Almighty God, our heavenly 
Father,^^ and "By whom and with whom, in the 
unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto 
Thee, Father Almighty, world without end,^^ and 
the strain is repeated in the Gloria in Excelsis, as 
well as in other portions of the service. 

So, for example, we may make our preparation 
some week lie in the effort to realize more fully that 



206 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the Eucharist binds our earthly worship with that 
of the saints and angels in heaven. We recall such 
a picture as that in St. Margaret's Churchy Liver- 
pool, in the upper part of which is a representation 
of the adoration of the Lamb that had been slain, 
the ineffable Victim lying upon the celestial altar, 
angels and saints being around Him; in the lower 
part, an eartlily altar properly vested and decorated, 
on it the chalice and paten, a priest in front with 
arms extended as he makes the sacrificial prayer, and 
kneeling by him a company of the faithful, men, 
women, and children ; and as explanatory of the two 
scenes, as it were unifying and identifying them, 
streams of golden light issuing from the Lamb above 
and descending upon the sacred vessels below. What 
the Church on earth is doing in eucharistic worship 
that same thing the Church in heaven is doing at the 
same moment in like adoration and the priest at the 
altar here is fulfilling the service of Him who repre- 
sents us and pleads for us in heaven. With this 
picture in mind, we go over the service again, finding 
the idea brought out, for example, in the Sandus, 
where with angels and archangels and with all the 
company of heaven we laud and magnify God's glo- 
rious name as we join in the seraphic hymn. Careful 
thought like this through the previous week will make 
our worship very real at the next Eucharist, and if we 
come also with special intercessory intention our 
prayers will be more fervent as we offer our petitions 
for our friends, ourselves, or the Church at large. 
Indeed it is always possible to give great reality to 



PREPARATION FOR HOLY COMMUNION 207 



the service by making it an occasion of intercession 
for those whom we know who are ^^in trouble, sorrow, 
need, sickness, or any other adversity,^^ as well as of 
mingled thanksgiving and prayer for those who have 
departed this life in God^s faith and fear. 

(6) Once more, we may use the various parts of 
the service itself as a basis of meditation, seeking to 
bring the imagination into play ; thus, at the offertory 
praying for generosity and picturing the poor widow 
as she cast her two mites into the treasury; at the 
confession, asking for such penitence as that of the 
publican; at the absolution, seeing our Lord bending 
over the man with the palsy and saying to him, '^^Son, 
be of good cheer: thy sins be forgiven thee'^; at the 
prayer of humble access, seeing the woman that had 
been a sinner prostrate at our Lord^s feet, bathing 
them with her tears and wiping them with her hair. 

(7) Or we may follow the division of the Church 
year, and so at different seasons vary our thought 
of the Eucharist : at Christmas, making it turn on the 
real presence; in Lent, on the thought of sacrifice; 
at Easter, on the joy of sin forgiven; or at Ascension, 
we may try to picture as above the heavenly oblation 
and connect it with that on earth, so that with angels 
and archangels and all the company of heaven we may 
join in magnifying God^s holy name. 

What we need, in short, is more than the formal 
saying of an office from some manual of devotion ; we 
should have something that will quicken the imagina- 
tion, stir up devotion, and give freshness to each com- 
munion. No one is so busy as to be unable to set 



208 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



aside a little time for this, if it be only a quarter of 
an hour the evening before, a little time before the 
service in church, or in the case of a busy man, some 
• brief thought, with eyes closed, as he goes to and fro 
on train or car to his office or work. All this may 
sound a little pietistic. It is not really so, if we 
remember that there is no suggestion that all of it 
shall be done at once. And, after all, do we not need 
something like this to train us in worship? It is 
said that Marshal Foch spends many hours every 
week in devotions before the altar — and surely he is 
a robust type of manly piety. And Kitchener, who 
did something of the same thing, was no anaemic 
saint ! 



CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 209 



XXIII. 

CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 

NO one who has the mildest sort of interest in the 
delightfully humorous sport of waving red rags 
before angry bulls will wish to miss this chapter! 
And yet — and yet — what a blessed thing it would be 
if we could induce some passionate partisans to lay 
aside their prejudices and reason quietly and calmly 
about a matter which deeply concerns every man or 
woman who has any real sense of sin or regards sin 
as anything more than a somewhat unfortunate mis- 
take, of rather slight importance, certainly nothing 
to give us grave anxiety — God is so good ! 

Sin is not a thing to be treated in this casual 
fashion. In any discussion of confession and absolu- 
tion it ought to be stated at the outset that the ques- 
tion has to do with the most serious concern of life, 
the removal of the barrier that separates us from God. 
It would be absolutely useless to discuss it with one 
who does not realize the awfulness of sin. There 
must be something more than a readiness to confess 
that we have faults and failings. If we have not 
the consciousness of personal guilt present and dis- 



210 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



tiirbing the sonl^ a sense of the grievousness of sin. 
a feeling that in our own case its burden is intoler- 
able^, then we are not in a mood to discuss any method 
by which it is proposed to bring us the blessing and 
peace of forgiveness. This chapter, then^ is for those 
who know what sin is, who are troubled and concerned 
about its presence within them, who with all their 
heart desire to be rid of it and to be wholly turned to 
God. So often questions about confession are asked 
in a flippant or argumentative spirit. It never does 
any good to try to answer them, if they are so asked. 
But if it be realized that sin is a dreadful reality, 
awful in character, deadly in its consequences, and 
that to discuss it is a solemn and serious matter — 
in that case a quiet consideration of the subject of 
confession may be helpful. 

At the outset it will be well to emphasize at once 
the fact that no one dreams of asserting the power 
of a priest, in himself, to forgive sins. All worthy 
penitence, whether with sacramental confession or 
without it, surely receives God's fullest forgiveness. 
Xo priest has power to forgive sins. God only can do 
that. He only knows the heart of man and He only 
can pronounce pardon. It is well to note, however, 
that the pardoning authority is exercised by the 
Second Person of the Godhead. ^^All judgment is 
committed to the Son'^ — who, because He has become 
incarnate and has lived our life in its weakness and 
limitations, brings us the assurance that we are judged 
by One who has experienced our temptations, is per- 



CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 211 



fectly acquainted with our infirmities and tenderly 
pitiful of our failings. 

As if to emphasize this, our Lord once worked a 
miracle to prove His possession of the authority. 
^^That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power 
on earth to forgive sins — then saith He to the sick 
of the palsy, Arise, take up thy bed and go unto thine 
house.^^ It is significant that the power is exercised 
by Him not in His divine nature only but through 
His humanity. "The Son of Man hath power on 
earth to forgive sins/^ He says. "He hath authority 
to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of 
Manr 

Let us notice just one more fact : that in the first 
offering of His pardon to the penitent soul our 
Lord Christ bestows the gift by means of a sacrament. 
We need not go over the whole subject of baptism 
again; enough to say that conviction of sin, conver- 
sion to God, and faith in Christ are not all that the 
sinner needs; if these are real, they will lead him to 
our Lord in childlike submission to His will to 
receive pardon in the way He offers it, by complying 
with the simple rite which He ordained for the heal- 
ing and cleansing of our moral nature. Here, then, 
we have reached a point where a remarkable fact 
appears : that God the Son in offering to remove the 
burden and guilt of sin attaches the gift to outward, 
visible, material means. And not only that, but 
uses weak and fallible men as His instruments in 
the application of these means. It surely is no strain- 
ing of logic to assert that if God uses His ministers 



212 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



in tlie bestowal of the first pardoning gift in baptism 
He may also use them in renewing our baptismal 
purity when we have again fallen into sin. This 
is exactly what absolution does for us — it is a 
re-application of our original baptismal blessing, a 
daily proffer of pardon, given through outward means 
and by the authoritative voice of God^s minister. 

How else but on this theory shall we explain the 
passages wherein our Lord gives special authority 
to the Church and her ministry in dispensing the 
forgiveness which He came to impart? ^^As My 
Father hath sent Me, even so send I you/^ He says to 
His apostles. He breathed on them and said, ^^Eeceive 
ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit they 
are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain 
they are retained.^^ ISTor is the authority given to the 
apostles alone; it is to pass on to their successors. 
Telling them that they are to receive power from on 
high and are to go into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature. He adds a word which was 
not fulfilled in them personally but will be in those 
who have afterward entered upon the same oflSce, ^Tlio, 
I am with you alway even unto the end of the world.^^ 

Our Lord, then, is the true source of forgiveness ; 
He exercises His power as Son of Man in His human 
nature ; He appoints others to carry on the pardoning 
work after His ascension, in His Xame; He endows 
them with the Holy Ghost for their office and He 
provides that the authority given them shall pass 
to their successors, with whom He guarantees His 
presence as long as time shall last. 



CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 213 



The place of confession and absolution in the 
Christian life is seen^ therefore^ to be of a piece with 
sacramental doctrine in general. Just as God uses 
material means in baptism for conveying forgiveness 
and new life to the soul, jnst as in Holy Communion 
the souFs food is given through outward and visible 
signs, so here God offers a special gift to the penitent, 
attaching it to an outward form, the human voice, 
the solemn gesture of benediction, the words of cov- 
enanted meaning. There is no question whatever 
of human intervention in God^s gift of pardon. He 
and He only forgives and there can be no doubt that 
He freely forgives all in whom He sees the move- 
ments of contrition. But for our sake, that we may 
be helped to a knowledge of self, that there may be 
fostered in us a real and sincere sorrow for sin, and 
that our faith may be quickened to a deeper realiza- 
tion of His cleansing grace. He has provided this 
special sacramental means of imparting pardon and 
grace, using for that purpose as His authorized agents 
and representatives the ministers of His Church. 
They are His ambassadors, speaking in His name. 
He has committed to them a "ministry of reconcil- 
iation^\ 

In all that has been said thus far there need be 
no reference whatever to what is known as auricu- 
lar confession. The cleansing grace of absolution is 
received in the public offices of the Church as truly as 
in the private administration of the sacrament of pen- 
ance. The use of private or auricular confession is 



214 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



purely a matter of discipline and practical utility; 
doctrinally it differs in no way from public and gen- 
eral confession, ^^n itself^ so far as the movement 
of grace is concerned^ the absolution is the same, 
whether public or private. The difference lies in the 
method of preparing to receive it. If souls are able 
to grasp it for themselves as firmly, it is as valid 
and full when uttered in a general formula to a 
thousand together as when uttered to them one by 
one.^^ ' 

Yet it may be questioned whether many of us 
have so complete a knowledge of self or so intense 
and vivid a realization of God^s presence, that we 
can put into the general confession the same deep 
penitence as into a particular confession or receive 
from the general absolution the same comfort and 
confident assurance as from words addressed to us 
individually. While we frankly acknowledge, then, 
that private confession should not be urged indis- 
criminately upon every soul and freely admit some 
of the dangers that surround it, it does seem that for 
most of us God is meeting here a real craving of the 
soul. A natural impulse leads us to some particular 
confession, not to God only but in the presence of 
others. So it was with those who were baptized by 
St. John in the Jordan, ^^confessing their sins^^; so 
with those at Ephesus who had been convicted of sin 
and ^^came and confessed and showed their deeds^\ 
Practically, in the case of many of us, is it not 



^ Mason : The Faith of the Gospel. 



CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 215 



true that confession to God alone is merely admission 
of sinfulness rather than humble confession of sins? 
Most of us do not realize very keenly the presence of 
God and to tell our story to one who is His delegate 
fosters a holy shame and contrition. For many it 
seems the only way of honor (since we have sinned 
against an Incarnate Saviour who was manifested as 
man) to make before man a formal acknowledgement 
and confession. Some of us, too, would never know 
our sins i£ we were not thus forced to go over them in 
detail. Others (and that from no weakness or inde- 
cision of character) need the aid of counsel and advice 
from a godly and experienced minister, and though 
^^direction^^ is no necessary part of penance they can- 
not get this without telling him their sins. Some, 
without any morbidness, long for the personal assur- 
ance of forgiveness, ^^Son, daughter, thy sins be 
forgiven thee; go in peace.^^ Yet others have felt 
that the knowledge that they must from time to time 
make particular and detailed confession of their sins 
acts as a restraining influence and helps them to con- 
quer such sins in recurring temptations. They ought 
not to need such restraint, they are quite aware, 
and yet as a matter of fact they do need it and 
are helped by it. 

For these, or for some one of many other reasons, 
one who is seriously and anxiously trying to gain 
peace with God may desire special help other than 
that of the larger and more general assurance of for- 
giveness in Christ and at least at some time in his 
life, or at some important turning points, may need 



216 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the help of private eonfessioii and absolution. The 
unfortunate fact is that in most people the sense of 
sin has fallen to a very low level. They do not bother 
their heads about it. "Let the dead bury their dead.^^ 
^TVTiy worry I am far from believing in frequent 
private confession^ still less have I any sympathy with 
over-insistence upon it as a prerequisite to Holy Com- 
munion. My own pastoral experience has proved to 
me that sometimes those who practise it are by no 
means the sturdiest type of Christians. But I do 
know that at times it is necessaiy. Wide experience 
has taught me that on important occasions, at least, 
it is a blessing, and I know that for those who are 
preparing for confirmation and are in a receptive state 
it has immense influence in deepening their sense 
of sin, their assurance of pardon, and in general their 
consciousness of the divine. The time has gone by 
when a mere word about confession was enough to 
drive people crazy who saw no harm in a secluded 
tete-a-tete interview between the pastor and a member 
of his flock. The truth is, that if intercourse of this 
kind is to be allowed it is much safer in this way 
than in any other, as being more open as well as 
surrounded with the solemnities of religion. 

It may be asked whether confession is really a 
teaching of the Anglican Church. In that case we 
have only to point to our formularies. In the form 
of ordination of priests in the Prayer Book we find 
words that express plainly the belief that though God 
alone forgives sin, He uses human instruments in 



CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 217 



doing so. ^^Eeceive the Holy Ghost/^ the bishop says 
as he lays his hands on the candidate, ^^for the office 
and work of a priest in the Chnrch of God, now com- 
mitted nnto thee by the imposition of our hands. 
Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and 
whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.'^ If 
a communicant cannot quiet his own conscience and 
is held back from the altar, this advice is given in the 
American book: ^^Let him come to me or to some 
other Minister of God^s Word and open his grief, that 
he may receive such godly counsel and advice as may 
tend to the quieting of his conscience and the removal 
of all scruple and doubtfulness^^; or, as the English 
book puts it, he is to go to his parish priest, ^^or to 
some other discreet and learned Minister of God^s 
word and open his grief, that by the Ministry of 
God^s Holy Word he may receive the benefit of abso- 
lution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to 
the quieting of his conscience and avoiding of all 
scruple and doubtfulness.^^ In our Prayer Book, in 
the office of visitation of prisoners, the priest is 
directed to exhort the prisoner "to a particular con- 
fession of the sin for which he is condemned^^ and 
when confession has been made "to declare to him 
the pardoning mercy of God in the form which is 
used in the Communion Service^^ ; while in the Eng- 
lish office for the visitation of the sick, the priest is 
told to move the sick person to "make a special con- 
fession of his sins'^ and is then directed to absolve 
him in these words: "Our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
hath left power to His Church to absolve all sinners 



218 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great 
mercy forgive thee thine offences : And by His author- 
ity committed to me I absolve thee from all thy sins, 
in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost. Amen/' 

There is, however, an immense difference between 
this teaching of confession and the Eoman Catholic 
method. However much individual priests may urge 
such confession and assert its advantage in the spir- 
itual life, the going or not going is left to each indi- 
vidual soul. The matter is to be one of personal 
choice and desire. This freedom is well set forth in 
the ^^Order for Communion^' published by authority 
in the English Church in 1548, where it is urged that 
'^'^such as shall be satisfied with a general confession 
be not offended with them that do use, to their further 
satisfying, the auricular and secret confession to the 
priest; nor those also which think needful and con- 
venient, for the quietness of their own consciences, 
particularly to open their sins to the priest, to be 
offended with them that are satisfied with their hum- 
ble confession to God, and the general confession to 
the Church. But in all things to follow and keep 
the rule of charity; and every man to be satisfied 
with his own conscience, nor judging other men's 
minds or conscience.'' 

If we are ill, we do not go to a medical lecture 
and then endeavor, on the information received, to 
diagnose and treat our own case ; we visit a physician, 
tell him our symptoms, and have him prescribe for 
us. If we are spiritually sick, then, why should we 



CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION 219 



not see the advantage of consulting our pastor and 
seeking his personal counsel, instead of trusting only 
to the help of sermons, which at best are "medical 
lectures'^ on the souPs sickness and are necessarily 
general in character? 

"Sin/^ says Canon McComb/ "is something more 
than an unfortunate slip, a foolish mistake, a grave 
misfortune. It is the deliberate setting up of our 
wills against the will of God. It is not an accidental 
scar, a wart, or wen, but a deep-seated moral disorder.^^ 
"At rare moments people who have been dissatisfied 
with their place, or with their work, or with their 
income, are startled with a deeper thought — they are 
dissatisfied with themselves. This is not a sign of 
morbidity. On the contrary, it is a sign of life, an 
indication that all is not dead within.^^ 

Nor has this chapter been an unhealthy, morbid 
discussion. If sin is a serious taint — a real disease — 
it is worth while to ask how best to get rid of it. 



^ God*s Meaning in Life. 



220 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XXIV. 

THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD 

I S there snch an office as that of a Christian priest ? 
Were not all the Old Testament sacrifices fulfilled 
in Christ? Have we not all access to the throne of 
grace through His blood? What need of priests to 
stand between God and the soul? The word has 
fallen into such bad odor, too ! It arouses prejudice 
and has a hateful sound to so many ears. It suggests 
selfishness and cunning, hypocrisy and lies, all that 
is embraced in the popular denunciation of ^^priest- 
craft^\ Yet, there is the name in the Prayer Book ; 
there it is in the Bible applied to our Lord and His 
work. ^^I will raise Me up a faithful priest.^^ "Thou 
art a priest forever.^^ How shall we redeem the word 
and show that the dignity and beauty with which 
Jesus Christ ennobled it are carried over into the 
work of His servants in the ministry of His Church ? 

What do we mean by a priest? In the common 
conception of the word, he is one who offers a sacri- 
fice. We may include in it also a service man-ward. 
A priest is one who makes an offering to God and 
dispenses God^s gifts to men. 



THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD 221 



First, then, we must ask what is the fundamental 
idea of sacrifice. Essentially sacrifice is the dedi- 
cation of the will to Almighty God. The ideal of 
worship is this, that over all the earth men shall stand 
before God in adoration, with words like these on 
their lips : ^^Here am I ; use me. All that I am and 
all that I have I give to Thy service. Thou hast 
made me for Thyself; I dedicate my life to Thee, 
therefore, I offer Thee myself, my soul and body, in 
love and gratitude, to do Thy will.'^ This is true 
sacrifice, and all outward sacrifices are but symbols 
of this inner reality. 

Because man has sinned he has never been able 
to offer this perfect oblation. Yet, just because he 
has sinned he feels the greater need of sacrifice, not 
only in love and grateful service but in propitiation 
for the failures of the past. There is nothing in 
the world more pathetic than the history of sacrificial 
worship : men presenting their gifts to God, seeking 
for some adequate offering with which to make their 
peace with Him and so take up their right position 
before Him once more. In a previous chapter we 
tried to show something of what that sacrificial 
worship was and how it kept alive the sense of sin 
and preserved amid many distortions, degradations, 
and crude exaggerations the perfect ideal of sacri- 
fice. It was a constant reminder that something 
was needed before God could find satisfaction in His 
creation. In some way the life of man must be given 
to God ; nothing less than this could suffice to make 
God and man at one again. 



222 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Never, then, had a true sacrifice been offered the 
Father until Jesus Christ the perfect Man, as the 
head and representative of the race, offered Himself 
to God. iSTever till then could the Father forgive 
the sins of men without compromising His holiness 
and without danger of serious moral misunderstand- 
ing. God must have presented before Him one per- 
fect human life, an offering of absolute obedience to 
His holy will. This offering was made by our Lord 
Christ — not simply by His death, but in His life. 
The sacrifice of the cross was the culmination of a 
life of sacrifice. ^T came to do Thy will.^^ From 
the moment of His birth our Lord^s every movement 
was in loving submission to the Father. God could 
now look on earth and find one human will perfectly 
subordinated to His own, one life lived in complete 
obedience, one soul bearing patiently every trial and 
temptation, one heart absolutely loyal whatever the 
end might be. Through misunderstanding and mis- 
representation, violence and hatred, cruel injustice 
and oppression and at length even in death, this 
Man never swerved a hair^s breadth from the divine 
ideal for humanity. And now, when all was over 
and mankind in Christ had at last proved itself pleas- 
ing in God^s sight, the way of salvation could be 
opened for all. 

But not only must the sacrifice be prepared, it must 
be offered and pleaded as a part of the same great act. 
Here we are carried beyond our depth into a realm of 
mystery where it is difficult to find a sure foothold, 
but the words of Scripture make us confident of the 



THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD 223 



great fact that the offering begun by our Lord on 
earth is still continued and that in the heavenly 
places His presence is ever pleading the merits of 
His perfect oblation. There He lifts it up on high. 
His life, His entire dedication of Himself to God, His 
obedience unto death, is ever present before the Father 
as the ground of our forgiveness and restoration to 
the divine favor. 

Our Lord is a priest, then, our great High Priest, 
because He offered and pleads a true sacrifice. 

He is a priest also, because He dispenses God^s 
gifts to men. In a supreme way Jesus Christ does 
this. He brings us pardon, grace, and blessing from 
above; He ordains means by which divine strength 
is given to men; in Him ^^dwelleth all the fulness of 
the Godhead bodily^^ and He bestows of that fulness 
to men, so that through Him the very life of God is 
brought to them. He ministers to them also in His 
life of service. This is a part of His priestly work, 
by which the love and mercy and goodness of God 
are made real to men. Service such as His is in its 
essence priestly, because such service is sacrificial, 
the constant giving out of self, the spending of self, 
the pouring out of vital strength for others in such 
fashion that many times ^^virtue^^ must have ^^gone 
out of Him". 

Now the Church represents Christ on earth. 
Indeed, so real is its inner union with Him that we 
may say it is Christ on earth. It is His Body, ^"^the 
fulness of Him that fiUeth all in all." And there- 



224 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



fore, if Christ is a priest His Church, is also priestly 
in character. ^'^Ye are a chosen generation, a royal 
priesthood/*' are words used of the Church. "He 
hath made us [the members of His Church] kings 
and priests unto God.*^ VTe are speaking now of the 
whole body of Christian people. VTe are all priests, 
because we are members of a priestly body, the 
Church. 

In what does this priestly character of the Church 
consist? First of all, she is the means by which 
our Lord dispenses His spiritual gifts to men. The 
Church is a household of grace, a body through whose 
ordinances we are brought into union with the source 
of all spiritual strength. Again, the Church has a 
priesthood of service ; in works of charity and mercy, 
in those good works the like of which was never 
known till the Church set them forth however imper- 
fectly, as the embodiment of the mind of the blaster, 
in the thousand and one ways in which the spirit of 
Christ is manifested, she holds up His life before men, 
so that the remembrance of it never dies out of the 
earth. 

And then, because her members are sinful and 
weak and imperfect and so her self-dedication can 
never be absolutely realized, she pleads the merits of 
the atoning sacrifice of Christ, she shelters herself 
behind it as she lifts it up to God in the constant 
offering of the sacrament which He instituted in the 
night in which He was betrayed. We have seen how 
in this He places in her hands that very life which 



THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD 225 



He offers in heaven^ so that she, too, offers and pleads 
it before God. 

Look, Father, look on His anointed face, 
And only look on us as found in Him; 

Look not on our misusings of Thy grace, 

Our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim; 

For lo! between our sins and their reward. 

We set the Passion of Thy Son our Lord. 

If we realize that Jesus Christ is even now 
engaged in His priestly work^ that it is an essential 
element in His sacrifice that His blood shall not only 
be shed but shall be perpetually offered^ we shall 
see that when the Church engages in that divine serv- 
ice wherein she makes the same offering her work 
is a priestly work. 

If the Church, then^, is priestly in character her 
ministers must be priests. Although the whole nation 
of Israel was separated to God to be a ^^kingdom of 
priests^^, yet certain of their number, members of 
the tribe of Levi, were called out and set apart for a 
peculiar ministerial priesthood. They acted for their 
brethren in making offerings to God, they acted for 
God in conveying blessings to His people. Not that 
they were in any sense mediators between God and 
men; rather, God was using them as instruments 
through whom He gave gifts to their brethren. 

What is true of Israel is true also of the Christian 
dispensation. All of Christ^s people are ^^a chosen 
generation, a royal priesthood^^, yet certain of them 
are called to a special and peculiar service, a minis- 
terial priesthood. In the pleading of His great sac- 



m THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



rifice they act for their brethren by His appointment ; 
their priesthood is not something which simply 
inheres in their "order^^^ it is the expression of the 
priesthood of the whole body. In the bestowal of 
grace^ too^ their ministry is priestly : they act for Grod, 
they bless in His name^ they proclaim with authority 
His pardon^ they act for Him in the bestowal of bap- 
tismal regeneration^ He uses them in feeding His 
people with eucharistic food. It is no more remark- 
able that our spiritual blessings should thus come to 
us through others than that our natural blessings 
should be given through parents or friends."^ The life 
comes no less from God because it comes through the 
instrumentality of human parentage; the food is no 
less given by Him because others have their part in 
providing for the growing child ; the kindly care and 
education are no less a blessing from above because 
kinsfolk and teachers have been used in imparting 
them. So the baptismal birth, the sevenfold gift of 
the Spirit, the grace of absolution, the strengthening 
food of the Eucharist come from God, though God 
chooses to use human agents in bestowing them. 
Perhaps He confers both gifts — the physical and the 
spiritual — through these channels, that so the whole 
race may be bound together in love and thus we find 
the explanation of the ministerial priesthood in the 

^ See Gore: The Religion of the Church, page 160: "Is 
any spiritual power that a man can exercise so porten- 
tously great or so fundamental as the power to bring into 
the world an immortal soul? Does any power claimed for 
any priesthood equal this?^' 



THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD 227 



thought of the close union of Christ^s people through 
the bond that unites them to one another by reason 
of their union with Him. 

Now for the basis of this ministerial priesthood. 
Let us go back to the conception of the Church as 
the Body of Christ. In this body we are set as mem- 
bers. God hath appointed the members every one of 
them in the body as it hath pleased Him. In this 
body we live together in the Spirit, with diversities 
of gifts and differences of administrations — ^just as 
in the natural body the different members have each 
their separate labor, the head, the hand, the foot, the 
ear, the eye, each performing its own work to the 
upbuilding of the whole body. 

Bearing in mind this thought of the Church as 
the Body of Christ and ourselves as members of the 
body, we see the place of the Christian priesthood, 
as an organ of the body to perform one of its func- 
tions. The ministerial priesthood is the arm of the 
Church. God would not have the Churches work 
carried on at haphazard. There is a fixed and care- 
fully arranged organization, with members set apart 
for each particular work. The various functions of 
the Church are not left to the chance administration 
of self-chosen agents, there is a certain and definite 
rule according to which some of the members of the 
body are appointed to offer the Churches sacrifice and 
to dispense her gifts of grace as the mouthpiece and 
representative of the whole membership. The clergy 
are members of the Church in the same sense in which 



228 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the laity are members ; their priesthood and ministry 
are representative and they are in no sense mediators 
between God and men.^ 

May we not carry the conception of Christ^s 
priesthood into the pastoral work and Christian service 
of the Church and her ministers ? We must be careful 
lest we base onr idea of priesthood only in the doing 
of something. Priesthood goes deeper than that; it 
must include the leing something. Our Lord^s priest- 
hood was more fundamental than that of the Levitical 
ministry ; it was in His being and nature. He was a 
priest not only because of what He did, but because 
of what He was. So it does seem that the priesthood 
of the Church and that of her ministry must be a 
priesthood of sacrifice and service, the giving of life 
as a ransom for many, the utter dedication of self for 
the good of others. We may be quite sure that as 
this priesthood of service is more widely recognized 
in us by the world the priesthood of offering will also 
be readily accepted. Men rebel at the one, because it 
seems mechanical when dissevered from the other. 

A firm grasp on the essential principle of the 
priesthood here set forth will lead us to honor God's 
ministry with greater reverence than do those who 

^ It seems to me exceedingly difficult to find any middle 
ground between this theory of the ministry as having special 
office and function in the Church and the extreme opposite 
view which discards the idea of a ministry as in any way 
essential and merely places certain men over a congrega- 
tion for convenience of administration and worship. See 
Campbell: A Spiritual Pilgrimage, especially chapter xi. 



THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD 229 



think of the clergy simply as teachers and preachers ; 
none the less will it lead ns to honor the place of lay- 
men in the Church. Too often we regard lay mem- 
bership as a negative thing. Laymen are simply all 
those who are not priests. Our present way of look- 
ing at the subject will teach us that laymen have a 
positive office. We are not to shift upon the shoulders 
of the minister all responsibility for the work of the 
parish and leave him to labor alone for the salvation 
of souls, supposing that the only duty of laymen is 
to furnish the money to support the offices of religion ! 
The true layman feels that he has a service to perform 
which is just as real as that of the priest at the altar. 
God hasten the day when the laity may fully appre- 
ciate their privilege, in worship, in service, in labor 
for the advancement of the kingdom ! St. Paul mag- 
nified his office. The clergy of to-day, if they under- 
stand their priestly responsibility, will magnify theirs, 
not in a spirit of class pride and impatience of inter- 
ference from the laity but in St. PauTs spirit of awe 
at the greatness of his vocation. May the laity also, 
without detracting from the ministerial priesthood, 
magnify their place, too, as co-workers with their 
pastors in the household of God. 



230 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XXIV. 

THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 

GOD is a God of order. In nature He leaves noth- 
ing to chance^, He works by law. We have seen 
that in the Church also there is a fixed and definite 
rule by which certain functions of the body are 
assigned to the ministerial priesthood. 

This thought of the orderliness of God^s working 
in the Church will explain the law of succession in 
the ministry. When it was stated that the clergy of 
the Church have a representative priesthood it was not 
meant that their powers were derived from the body ; 
the authority comes from God and is exercised only 
by His appointment. While^ of course, the whole 
body of the faithful have a responsibility in the selec- 
tion and appointment of the clergy, the authority by 
which they act and the powers they exercise must 
come from God. He only can commission them. The 
authority could not come from the members of the 
body, because no one can confer a power which is 
greater than he himself possesses. 

It would appear from Scripture and continuous 
Church custom and tradition that this commission 



THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 231 



from God includes not merely the minister's belief 
that he has received a divine call^ but evidence that 
he has been set apart and ordained for his work in a 
divinely appointed way. This is necessary in order 
that those to whom he ministers^ as well as he him- 
self, may have the assurance of his divine commission. 
An inner call might be enough for him; others, how- 
ever, can know nothing about this. In addition to 
this call there must be the regularity of appointment 
as pledging for them the validity of his ministrations. 

If the sacraments of the Church are mere symbols, 
it is of little importance who administers them, or 
how they are administered. A dramatic and pictur- 
esque presentation of spiritual truth may well vary 
in method to suit the age or the race. It would make 
little difEerence who were the actors in the drama. 
But if the sacraments are actually means of con- 
veying life — outward and visible signs of inward 
and spiritual grace; channels through which grace 
is received — then it would seem only reasonable that 
there should be safeguards for their regular and valid 
celebration. It has been pointed out by an able and 
devoted Anglican writer, who has great respect for 
the Protestant position and has sought faithfully to 
interpret Protestant thought, that belief in a sacra- 
mental presence and gift and belief in a sacramental 
ministry have always gone together, Wherever the 
apostolic ministry has been rejected the sacramental 
belief has failed. Wherever belief in a sacramental 
gift has been weakened episcopacy has been defended 



232 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE UVE 



merely as a eonvenience or compromised as a question 
of minor importance/^ 

This is the point upon which stress is laid by 
Dr. Campbell^ the great English Nonconformist who 
recently received orders as a clergyman of the Church 
of England. ^^I cannot see how it can fairly be dis- 
puted/^ he says^ ^^that among early Christians the 
Church was always regarded as a mystical unity^ an 
earthly sodality with a super-earthly source and sanc- 
tion, an order permeated and sustained by a super- 
natural life. It was not a human institution, a club, 
a guild, a voluntary association of believers in a com- 
mon cause.^^ And he continues : ^Tan nothing be 
done to rescue the Christianity of the present-day 
English-speaking world from the calamitous error 
that it is only a set of views to be promulgated — and 
a more or less incoherent and unstable set of views at 
that — and not a life to be lived in corporate and 
immediate fellowship with another and higher world 
than that of our every day perceptions? This is 
practically the whole issue between sacramental and 
non-sacramental religion as it confronts us just 
now.^^ ' 

Nor is that all. The heart of Christianity is long- 
ing, with a great yearning, for the healing of its 
unhappy divisions and the restoration of a visible 
unity. We are seeing, as we never saw before, the 
evils of division. The war especially has revealed 

^ See A Spiritual Pilgrimage, page 270; also (quoted by 
Campbell) Kelly: The Church and Religious Unity, page 
147. 



THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 233 



the weakness of a disrupted Christendom. Men who 
never till now have realized clearly the need of unity, 
are praying for it, working for it, planning for it, 
anxiously awaiting signs of its approach. Now it 
seems to me quite evident that the principle of succes- 
sion in the ministry is a necessary element in the 
idea of a visible Church permanently knit into a 
visible unity. "If there is one Church, one visible 
society, to which all who are Christ's must belong, 
it must be made manifest where that Church is to be 
found. Continuity of doctrine is a great thing, but , 
it is not enough. There must also be continuity of 
persons. Otherwise any group of dissatisfied individ- 
uals may go oflf by themselves and still say, ^We are 
the Church.' " ' 

Were unity secured, therefore, it could not long 
continue without the ministry of unity to preserve it. 
The one ministry is centripetal, varieties of ministry 
necessarily centrifugal. The greatest possible bond of 
unity is to be found in the one authoritative ministry 
locally adapted, working in a Church where there is 
not only room but welcome for many varieties of 
thought and worship. If I may be allowed a homely 
illustration, we have an example of the possibility of 
such unity in variety in a Church which has succeeded 
in holding together in loyal membership High, Low, 
Catholic, Broad, Evangelical, Sacramentalist — each 
emphasizing one part of the many-sided truth yet 
none impelled to destroy the unity of the body in 
order to strengthen its own teaching, each free to hold 

^ Gore : The Religion of the Church, page 65. 



234 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



its cherished truth and yet^ through necessary contact 
with other truth^ saved from wholly succumbing to 
the heresy of the partial and fragmentary. 

This is the position to which a group of modern 
writers have arrived after an examination of the ques- 
tions which ^*^gather round the origin and early devel- 
opment of episcopacy [that is a ministry through 
bishops] and the nature and degree of the authority 
which it possesses. It is the position stated explicitly 
and with unusual clearness by one of the writers^ Dr. 
Armitage Eobinson. ''It is for the unity of the 
whole/^ he says^ ^'^that the historic three-fold ministry 
stands. It grew out of the need for preservation of 
unity when the apostles themselves were withdrawn. 
It is^ humanly speaking, inconceivable that unity can 
be reestablished on any other basis. This is not to 
say that a particular doctrine of apostolic succession 
must needs be held by all Christians alike. But the 
principle of transmission of ministerial authority 
makes for unity, while the view that ministry origi- 
nates afresh at the behest of a particular Church or 
congregation makes for division and subdivision. We 
have the happiness to live in days in which a reaction 
has set in against the long process of the division and 
subdivision of Christendom. Earnest spirits every- 
where around us are yearning after unity. On a 
reasonable interrogation of history the principle can 
be seen to emerge that ministry was the result of 
commission from those who had themselves received 
authority to transmit it. In other words we are 
compelled to the recognition that, at least for the 



THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 235 



purposes of unity, the episcopate is the successor of 
the apostolate/^ 

It is, then, the law of the orderliness of God^s 
working which explains the law of succession in the 
ministry. We believe that J esus Christ came on earth 
to found a Church. We believe that His apostles 
were its first ministers. They, under instructions 
from Him, organized its government. He had prom- 
ised to be with them always and so they ordained 
others as their successors, in whom this promise was 
to be fulfilled. 

It is perfectly plain that at first only those who 
had been ordained by the apostles could take the office 
of the ministry. By and by we see the apostles con- 
secrating others to whom is given this power of ordi- 
nation, so that during the life time of the apostles we 
find three orders of the ministry established: (1) The 
lowest order, who were called deacons and were given 
authority to preach and baptize; (2) another order, 
who were called presbyters and who not only per- 
formed the duties of the minor office, but were in 
charge of congregations and celebrated the Holy 
Eucharist; (3) a third order called apostles, who 
besides doing all that has been enumerated had the 
oversight of the churches and ordained and conse- 
crated to the ministry. Such were Timothy, Titus, 
and others. As yet the name "bishop^^ is given indis- 
criminately either to those of the apostolic order or 
to the presbyters; gradually, however, out of honor 
to the original Twelve, the name apostle was dropped 



236 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



as the designation of the highest order and the title 
bishop was reserved for them alone and was no longer 
applied to the second order. 

These bishops (or apostles) have consecrated 
others and they in turn still otherS;, so that the line 
has come down to the present day. The succession 
from the apostles has never failed, and the three 
orders have never ceased. The three great branches 
of the Church Catholic^ the Eastern, the Eoman, and 
the Anglican (which includes the American Episcopal 
Church) have this apostolic ministry; the Protestant 
Churches have dispensed with it. Most of them say 
that it is unnecessary ; some, like the "High Church'' 
Presb}i:erians and the Lutherans, claim to have a 
^^presbyterial succession'' — that is, a succession 
through presbyters, the second order of the ministry. 

The history of the way in which the ministry of 
the later Church emerged out of the apostolic minis- 
try cannot be exactly traced, but recent searching 
examination into the whole question of the origin and 
development of the episcopate has distinctly strength- 
ened the traditional view and illuminated the essen- 
tial principles, even though modifying some former 
conceptions. It is good to find that modern contro- 
versy has at least led to restatements of the whole 
subject, so that the historic episcopate is no longer 
defended merely as a mechanical succession through 
a tactual act, the laying on of hands, but is urged as 
embodying the principle of continuity with the past, 
as expressing the idea of an authority wider than that 
of any local or national Church, as magnifying the 



THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 237 



office rather than the man, and as being ^^of a piece^^ 
with the very idea of a sacramental religion. 

These considerations will make it easier to meet 
the three objections to the apostolic theory of the 
ministry which are commonly urged here in America. 

(1) First, there are those who deny that the 
Anglican, or the Episcopal, Church has the apostolic 
succession. Roman Catholics deny the claim and 
assert that to them alone is due the allegiance of Eng- 
lish-speaking Christians as having a valid ministry. 
What we claim, and what history proves, is that at the 
Reformation the English Church preserved absolutely 
her connection with the past. It is not necessary to 
go into the case in detail here, because so many books 
and pamphlets on the subject have been published 
that no one need be at a loss for the facts. ' There is 
not the slightest doubt that the Anglican Church 
traces her life back to the apostles. With her the 
Reformation was a "reform within the Church^^ and 
differed radically from the secession and revolt on the 
continent. When the storm was over only 177 out of 
the 9,400 clergy refused to conform to the new order ; 
one of the popes offered to accept the Prayer Book 
with all its changes, if the queen [Elizabeth] would 
acknowledge his supremacy, and, in short, there is 
abundant evidence of the care with which the old 
ministry was continued through Parker and his con- 

^ See, for example, the latest edition of Little's standard 
work, Reasons for Being a Churchman^ or chapters in the 
late Bishop Grafton's book, Christicm and Catholic. 



238 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



temporaries and successors and of the entire satisfac- 
toriness of the form of consecration by which they 
were ordained. In England^ after the Reformation, 
the Church remained the same catholic and apostolic 
body she had always been; she retained the bishops 
and the priesthood, the ancient creeds and the catholic 
faith and sacraments. She rejected the claim of the 
Bishop of Rome to be the head of the Church, the 
source of jurisdiction and the arbiter of doctrine; 
she removed abuses, guarded against popular errors, 
returned to the primitive custom of administering 
the Holy Communion, and restored the service to the 
people by saying it in a language they could under- 
stand, but she made no change which involved a loss 
of her Catholic heritage. ^^The separation was from 
Rome as a court claiming jurisdiction over England, 
not from Rome in any point of faith or order that had 
been ruled upon by the Church Universal.^^ 

(2) Again, the Churchman must meet the Pres- 
byterian claim to an apostolic succession through the 
second order of the ministry. Protestants generally 
regard the whole conception of the ^Validity of orders^^ 
as unmeaning, but the so-called ^^High Church^^ party, 
especially Scotch Presbyterians, are an exception to 
this position. It is their claim we are now consider- 
ing. The assertion that presbyters had the power of 
ordination rests upon the weakest possible foundation 
— a few obscure passages in the fathers, notably one 
of St. Jerome, and some instances of supposed presby- 
terial ordination as exceptions to an admitted general 
rule, such as (for example) the custom of Alexandria. 



THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 239 



Every one of these cases, however, may be explained 
quite as naturally on the Episcopal theory as on the 
Presbyterian and over against them is an overwhelm- 
ing preponderance of testimony as to the world-wide 
acceptance of the episcopate as the ordaining body. 
As soon as the Church emerges out of the sub- 
apostolic age, we find that the episcopate is every- 
where established, with episcopal ordination the 
universal rule. Is it not the height of absurdity, if 
Episcopacy is found without an exception by the 
middle of the second century, to suppose that 
it supplanted a Presbyterianism of the preceding 
period? Imagine the change being made in that 
short time from one form of government to another 
and yet history proving absolutely silent as to any pro- 
test, in any Church, from any presbyter whose rights 
had been so ruthlessly trampled upon ! Scripture and 
history alike must have curious interpretations read 
into them to show the faintest evidence that any but 
a Bishop or Apostle ever had authority to ordain in 
the Church of God. 

(3) Finally, we shall be met by an appeal to senti- 
ment from those who care nothing about the apos- 
tolic succession and regard the whole matter with 
indifference, usually with supercilious indifference. 
"Your claim,^^ they say, "simply unchurches all other 
Christian bodies and invalidates their ministry. 
Deliver me from any theory which says that nobody 
outside the Church can be saved, which then confines 
the Church within the limits of one or two com- 
munions and will not recognize the work of the godly 



240 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



ministers of other denominations, because, forsooth, 
they have been ordained by a slightly different method 
from that of your own body/^ 

The general answer to these several charges is, 
They simply are not true : 

It is not true, for example, that we think no one 
can be saved outside the Church. We do believe 
that God has promised salvation through our Lord 
Christ; we do believe that Christ left the Church to 
bring this salvation to men and therefore we plead 
with men to listen to our message. In other words, 
we believe that the Church is the normal and cov- 
enanted way of salvation. But it is far from our 
thought to tie God down to this one method of bring- 
ing men to Him. We believe that He has promised 
life to those who accept it in this way; but we do 
not think for a moment that He may not have other 
ways of accomplishing the same work. 

Xor is it true that we confine the Church to our 
own communion. It has been explained in a previous 
chapter that the organization of the Catholic Church 
is that which is administered by bishops who are 
charged with our Lord^s commission; but its member- 
ship includes all baptized persons, whether they be 
Greeks, Eoman, Anglican, or Protestants. Xobody 
denies that Christ has faithful, loving servants in 
everv denomination, nor does anvone denv that what 
they are and what they do is the result of the grace 
they receive from Him. I do not know where this 
has been stated more clearly than by Bishop Gore : * 

* The Religion of the Church, page 156-7. 



THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 241 



^^We know quite well how the Nonconformist bodies 
in England grew up. We know quite well under what 
conditions they have been recruited and gained their 
strength. It has been largely, at least, because of our 
failure to be what a Church ought to be. We have 
by our sins and shortcomings supplied them with 
only too much excuse for separation. It will there- 
fore cause us the less surprise to find tokens of the 
action of the Holy Spirit most plainly among them, 
not only among those who in virtue of baptism are 
individually members of the Church, but quite as 
obviously among the Quakers and elsewhere where 
baptism is rejected. I am sure we ought to recognize, 
as frankly as possible, that God has been pleased to 
work with a full measure of His grace far beyond 
all normal channels and laws of validity. I trust that 
the attitude of contempt which is so common in 
Romanists towards us and has been so common in 
Anglicans towards Nonconformists will become very 
rapidly a thing of the past. I trust we shall learn to 
hold with them the fullest measure of Christian 
fellowship which we can hold without faithlessness 
to the principles we stand for.^^ 

The Anglican Church has never pronounced the 
sacraments or orders of others invalid. She simply 
declares that "it is evident to all men, diligently read- 
ing Holy Scripture and the ancient authors, that from 
the Apostles' time there have been these orders of 
ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and 
Deacons'', and she preserves the apostolic method by 
providing that none but those having episcopal ordi- 



242 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



nation shall minister at her altars, but she nowhere 
requires the rejection of speculative opinions about 
the validity of any other orders than these, in the 
stress of later difficulties. We are not harshly con- 
demning others. It is simply a question on our part 
of preserving what we believe to be the institution of 
Christ^s apostles. ^T\^e do not presume/^ said the late 
Bishop Lightfoot, "to pass any judgment on Chris- 
tian communities differently organized than ourselves. 
Our plain duty is to guard faithfully what has been 
committed to us and leave others to Him who judgeth 
righteously.^^ If sometimes we may appear to be 
overzealous in guarding this trust, it is because in 
this ministry and in this alone can we see hope of 
a permanent Christian unity which shall include 
not merely Protestantism, but Eoman and Eastern 
Christianity as well. 

Bless, Lord, we beseech Thee, Thy Holy Cath- 
olic Church ; fill it with truth and grace ; where it is 
corrupt, purge it ; where it is in error, direct it ; where 
it is superstitious, rectify it ; where it is amiss, reform 
it ; where it is right, strengthen and confinn it ; where 
it is divided and rent asunder, heal the breaches 
thereof, Thou Holy One of Israel : through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 



CONFIRMATION AND OTHER SACRAMENTS 243 



XXVL 

CONFIRMATION AND OTHER SACRAMENTS 

CONPIEMATION has sometimes been called the 
ordination of the laity. Most Churchmen believe 
that the laying on of hands brings some special grace 
to those who have been called to the clerical life and 
would serve God in the ministry of the Church. How- 
ever one may emphasize the need of an inward call, 
the subsequent ordination must be regarded as a 
solemn and impressive ceremony, a means of convey- 
ing grace for a high calling and not simply a formal 
setting apart for service. Almost anyone who has 
any conception of sacramental grace in baptism or 
Holy Communion will believe at least this much 
about ordination. 

Now what ordination is to the clergyman con- 
firmation is to the layman. We have seen that there 
is a ministry of the laity as well as of the clergy. 
Let us ask now what our idea of the ministerial office 
is. We Churchmen think of it as a priesthood — and 
what has been said will show that we need not be 
afraid of the word — and our conception of the office 
is that of one who acts toward God for men and 



244 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



toward men for God. Yet^ however highly we es- 
teem this priestly office^ we have seen that back of it 
is the general priesthood of the whole body of the 
faithful. In the Eucharist, for example, the priest 
pleads the sacrifice of Christ as he lifts up the sacred 
elements, but he does so as the agent and represent- 
ative of the Church: the Eucharist is a corporate 
service, and what is done is done in the name of the 
body — we offer, we present. The ministerial priest- 
hood is the expression of the general priesthood. 

Or one may think of the ministry rather as a 
spiritual leadership, the clergyman being the head 
of the congregation and their mouthpiece in offering 
the prayers of the Church: but here, again, there is 
a lay ministry of leadership, as (to take an instance) 
in the family priesthood, where in the common 
prayers, in the grace at meals and in the exercise of 
all that is involved in the religious life of the home 
the father holds powers which descend to him from 
patriarchal times, gaining new sanction and authority 
in our risen life in Christ. 

Or, if we think of the ministry' as a Christian 
service and of those who are called to holy orders as 
being dedicated to a life of labor for their fellow- 
men, here most of all there is a lay ministry — the min- 
istry of individual service for God, such service as 
works and prays for the spread of Christ's kingdom 
and constantly ministers to the uplifting of those one 
meets in the frequent intercourse of the ordinary, 
every-day life. This conception of what has been 
called the priesthood of the laity emphasizes, too, the 



CONFIRMATION AND OTHER SACRAMENTS 245 



thought that all of life is sacred, so that for the 
Christian it may be said that the line between things 
secular and things religious is abolished. Every part 
of home and business and social life is to be pen- 
etrated with religion and a man^s ordinary occupation 
is to become his ^^vocation^^ There was a time when 
one^s trade or profession or business was spoken of as 
one^s ^^calling^^ and it would be well to get the name 
back as a reminder that the man in the pew is as 
truly a minister of God, though not in the same office, 
as the priest at the altar. 

It is but a natural step from this thought of the 
sacredness of life to that of a corresponding grace 
that shall fit us for its duties. So we find in the 
special gift of confirmation a full and free outpouring 
of the Holy Ghost to enable us to live a life of 
Christian service. The Church leads her own chil- 
dren to confirmation and asks others who come into 
her fold to enter in this way, because the ordinance 
is one of such deep and solemn meaning. It is not 
a bare form or ceremony, nor is it merely an occasion 
for the public reiteration and assumption of bap- 
tismal vows. It is not, in fact, anything that we do, 
so much as it is something that God does — He 
strengthens, He confirms. He bestows the sevenfold 
gift of the Spirit for the labor of life. It is the 
bestowal of the fulness of the Holy Ghost to fit men 
for a holy calling. We do not exaggerate its im- 
portance, therefore, when we go so far as to say that 
it is the ordination of the laity. Just as the clergy- 
man must be consecrated and set apart and by the 



246 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



laving on of hands receive grace for his work, so the 
layman must be endowed for his. To live in the 
TTorld and yet not be of it; in the midst of so many 
and great dangers and temptations to hold always for 
the truth ; in business, in the office, in the shop, or the 
household, to show forth God's glory; so to act that 
others may be won by our godly conduct — all this, 
assuredly, calls for manifold gifts of grace. ^Ve are 
not surprised, therefore, at the Church's belief in the 
realit}' and power of the confirmation gift; we should 
rather be astonished to hear that it could be anything 
less than is claimed for it. Men need the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit in the multiplied and perplexing 
duties of life and here we have the pledge that they 
receive it. 

Xot that sve confijie the presence of the Spirit to 
this or to any ordinance. The work of the blessed 
Breath of God is not limited to an}i:hing less than 
all humanity in its beneficent operation. But ^'here 
His working is sweetest and strongest and largest; 
here it is promised working, pledged working, cove- 
nanted working.'^ 

So we find in Holy Scripture that the laying on 
of hands for the lait}' is as well established as the 
ordination of the clergy. St. Paul at Ephesus (Acts 
xix. 4-6) baptizes his converts and then lays his hands 
upon them, and through the laying on of the apostle's 
hands the Holy Ghost comes on them. At Samaria, 
Philip the deacon (Acts viii. 1-4-1 7) baptizes many 
converts, and then two of the apostles, St. Peter and 
St. John, come down from Jerusalem, pray for them 



CONFIRMATION AND OTHER SACRAMENTS 247 



and lay their hands upon them and they receive the 
Holy Ghost. It is no wonder that this laying on of 
hands is reckoned (Hebrews vi. 2) as one of the "first 
principles of the doctrine of Christ'^^ one of the 
"foundations" of the Christian life. 

Perhaps it may not be amiss to add that this 
thought of confirmation as the ordination of a lay- 
man for his work leads naturally to a larger concep- 
tion than most of us have of the sacramental system 
of the Church. The sacramental idea is not that of 
grace in baptism or Holy Communion only^ but of 
grace meeting us at every turn^ hallowing all our 
occupations and shedding a divine light on every walk 
of life: grace that gives spiritual power to the can- 
didate who kneels before the bishop^, the successor of 
the apostles^ helping him to serve God amid the eager 
activities of a business or professional career; grace 
to bless the newly married couple at the altar^ en- 
abling them to live together in what is thus made an 
holy estate of matrimony; grace to bring physical 
and spiritual healing to the sick and feeble and to 
sanctify to their use the physician's remedies; grace 
to add new spiritual vigor to the pardoned penitent 
making a fresh start in life ; grace to confer character 
on those who are particularly called to holy orders in 
the Church of God — and all these gifts just as real as 
the pardoning grace of baptism or the strengthening 
grace of Holy Communion. 

We do believe^ then^ that when once it is realized 
how sacred life is and how much we need divine 



248 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



strength to live it as sons of God the value of con- 
firmation will be appreciated as conferring a special 
gift of the Holy Ghost and its appropriateness will 
be particularly evident when it is administered^ as 
it is in the Western Churchy at just that period when 
one is entering upon life's work. It is sometimes 
asked why confirmation should be insisted on for 
those who wish to unite with the Church from other 
Christian bodies. "You do not ask them to be bap- 
tized again/' it is urged; "why ask them to be con- 
firmed^ if they have already made a profession of 
Christian faith?" If confirmation were merely a 
profession of Christian faith or a public renewal of 
baptismal vows, it would not be thought necessary 
for one who had already openly confessed our Lord. 
We do not insist on baptism, because that is some- 
thing that has already been done for the soul and to 
repeat it would be sacrilege. But the laying on of 
hands is something that has not been done^ something, 
too, so full of meaning that to leave it undone would 
be a distinct loss to the soul. 

If confirmation were more often presented in this 
way to those who now regard it simply as a public 
confession of Christ, surely many more would be 
anxious to receive it. Unless it were this we could 
not ask one who had already confessed Him to do so 
again. To insist upon it would be to lay stress on 
a mere form. And confirmation is not a mere form; 
it is an apostolic ordinance instinct with life. 



THE BIBLE AND ITS INSPIRATION 249 



XXVII. 

THE BIBLE AND ITS INSPIRATION 

OUE final authority in matters of faith is the 
inspired Word of God, the Holy Scriptures of 
the Old and J^ew Testaments. To these — not as an 
independent authority, but as the record of the 
thought and belief of the Church — we turn for light 
on the problems of life. Here, however, we are face 
to face with a fact which we must not attempt to 
belittle, that faith in the Bible has been tremendously 
weakened in the generation now passing. The claims 
of the newer criticism, the moral difficulties of the 
Old Testament, realized now as never before: these 
and other causes have upset the faith of many and 
led them to reject the Bible as a divine revelation. 
We must face the facts as they are then and endeavor, 
if possible, to find a solution of these difficulties. 

Just what is the Bible ? To put this very simply : 
Holy Scripture is the record of man's search for God 
and of God's response to his seeking. 

Men, everywhere and always, have been trying to 
find God. The history of the world religions is a 
record of their efforts to know Him. And the history 



250 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



of Israel is the story of a nation which, whatever its 
faults and failings, gave itself preeminently to this 
religious task. With other nations there is much in 
the way of secular progress and running with this a 
spiritual development also, but with the Jews the 
record of the nation is the record of a people who 
devoted themselves almost exclusively to the effort 
after spiritual growth. However we may account 
for it, Israel is a peculiar people. Its evolution is a 
spiritual evolution. It seems to have a special work 
and that work is the development of the religious con- 
sciousness. Others sought for God, feeling after Him 
if haply they might find Him ; Israel was in a unique 
way devoted to the task. It has no history apart from 
its religious history, no literature except its religious 
writings. It seems to have but one purpose, to keep 
alive the knowledge and remembrance of God. 

Xow if we believe in God as a person we believe 
that when men seek Him He will reveal Himself 
to them. When one human personality strives with all 
its might to know another, that other cannot remain 
indifferent. Knowledge, friendship, intimacy, is the 
reward of those who seek it. So those who try to 
find God learn that as they move toward Him He 
moves to meet them: when men strive diligently to 
attain a knowledge of Him He unveils Himself and 
opens before them the treasures of His mind. In 
proportion as men have tried to understand His char- 
acter has He responded and their aspiration has had 
its answer in His stooping to meet them and breathing 
into them His own Spirit. 



THE BIBLE AND ITS INSPIRATION 251 



This will help us to see what we are to understand 
by the inspiration of the Bible. It does not mean that 
the Book itself is a mechanically inspired writing. It 
means that men whose souls have breathed forth their 
longing for God have in turn had His life breathed 
into them. The men are inspired, rather than the 
Book. 

Yet Biblical inspiration is unique. While we 
find that other men, and therefore other books, are 
inspired, they are not guided by God as are the Scrip- 
ture writers. Men in every nation and every time, 
seeking God, have found Him, but as the Jewish 
nation gave itself peculiarly to this search for God, 
and as its prophets and spiritual leaders devoted 
themselves with all their powers to this one task, so 
God made his response to their aspiration more 
generous and satisfying. Biblical inspiration differs 
from all other inspiration because it is God^s answer 
to a search for Him such as can be found in no other 
nation and with no other individuals. The ancient 
fathers used to speak of an inspiration of the great 
thinkers of Greece as a reflection of that Light that 
lighteth every man coming into the world. How 
much larger and richer, how transcendently deeper 
and fuller, is the inspiration that comes to the spir- 
itual leaders of a people especially devoted to the 
search for God, who inherited all the past of a race 
and nation dedicated to such a search, and but gave 
expression to the accumulating knowledge into the 
possession of which they had come. 



252 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



With this conception of what the Bible is, we 
shall see the limitations of inspiration. The men 
who wrote the Scriptures were inspired for one special 
purpose : that they might tell about God. He revealed 
Himself to them. He did not necessarily tell them 
more than other men knew abont science, or history, 
or medicine, or a hundred other things; He simply 
revealed to them His own character, His nature, His 
mind, His purpose for men. The Bible is inspired for 
one purpose — to show the truth abont God, to give 
men a sure and certain record in matters of faith and 
morals. Mistakes in history, errors in fact, ignorance 
of scientific trnth — none of these, if they be present, 
will invalidate the claims of Scripture. The Bible 
writers do not pretend to any infallibility on these 
points. They are inspired simply to give a right 
moral teaching and to point out a clear path of 
faith. Assuming, for example, that they accept the 
current theories of their time about the creation of 
the world, or that they place on record a well-known 
legend about a universal flood, we have no concern 
about the source of these stories. What interests us is 
that now for the first time God is related to these 
ancient narratives : He creates. His Spirit broods 
upon the face of the waters, He enters into relations 
with men, their errors are sins against Him, He 
rewards or punishes. 

And so it is with Bible History. We are not con- 
cerned so much with the accuracy of names and dates 
as with the fact that as nations rise and fall, the Bible 
record of their life differs from all other history in 



THE BIBLE AND ITS INSPIRATION 253 



that it shows God^s hand in all things. He stands 
behind the scenes working His purpose out and what- 
ever human causes may seem to bring about results 
they are shown to be but the instruments of His 
power. Secular historians would tell of the struggles 
of Egypt or Syria or Damascus or the kingdoms of 
the East and how Israel was affected by their varying 
fortunes; the Bible historians show God behind all, 
working out His purposes through human agencies. 
Secular writers would tell of the reign of Cyrus and 
its influence on the history of Israel ; the Bible writers 
show this, but show also how God ^^raised up Cyrus^^ 
to carry out His own divine plans. An ordinary his- 
torian would tell of human events that proceeded 
from certain causes and led to certain results; the 
inspired historian shows God as the moving power 
behind all causes. In measure there are seers and 
prophets who have done something like that for us 
in the Great War. We have only to read them to 
discover by contrast the heights of biblical prophetic 
power. 

Such a view of inspiration will show us again that 
there is an evolutionary progress in revelation. If the 
Bible is the record of man^s search for God, we shall 
expect it to show the steps that have marked the 
progress of that search. Men do not come to know 
Him all at once to perfection ; rather, they gain this 
knowledge piecemeal, little by little, till it is for all 
practical purposes complete. 

So there is an evolution in the idea of God. At 
first the thought of Him seems very anthropomorphic ; 



254 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



then He is regarded as hardly more than a tribal 
deity; then, in prophets and psalmists, He becomes 
the God of the whole earth; and at last in the gospels 
and the epistles. He is seen as Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, devising means that all His banished ones may 
return. 

Or take, again, the morality of the Bible. At 
first, in some of the stories of the Book of Judges, it 
is crude and imperfect. Even in the psalms there 
are lapses into a spirit of vengefulness, with impreca- 
tions against the enemies of Israel and of IsraeFs 
God. These are not to be judged by themselves, but 
rather as compared with surrounding heathenism. 
Only so do we get an adequate conception of the 
immense distance that separated those who knew God 
from those who had not yet found Him. Yet, little 
by little, relatively imperfect ideas of God^s moral 
character drop away, until in the revelation of the 
iSTew Testament we see God in His infinite perfection, 
a God of beauty, of holiness, of tender mercy and com- 
passion and love. There are great elements of truth 
in the old conception; for God is just as well as lov- 
ing, stern as well as compassionate, with a holiness 
that hates sin. In the days when America was neutral 
some of us found deep satisfaction in preaching about 
the Assyrians, because we really meant the Prussians ! 
We '^^thanked God for the imprecatory psalms^^ ! Hab- 
bakkuk had a real message for us ! We saw that the 
Old Testament thought is allowed to remain as a 
witness to this side of God^s nature, as, indeed, it finds 
reiteration even in the thought of St. John or St. 



THE BIBLE AND ITS INSPIRATION 255 



Paul, or in the words of onr Lord Christ Himself. 
The predominant thought there is of the God whose 
love for sinners shines in the light of the Cross of 
Calvary, but Jesus Himself did not speak always with 
a wooing, almost with a cooing note ! Eighteous 
indignation and intense hatred of evil were always a 
part of the mind of Christ. ^ 

The moral difficulties of the Bible disappear when 
once we realize that there was this growth in the 
knowledge of God and in the appreciation of what His 
holiness involves. We are prepared to learn that the 
spirit of Elisha is forbidden to the sons of Zebedee, 
or that the imprecatory psalms give place to the 
prayer of St. Stephen, "Lord, lay not this sin to 
their charge." 

So, while all parts of the Bible are of value, all 
are not of equal value. We reach the Holy of Holies 
as we gaze on the face of the Son of Man. But the 
distance that separates the New Testament from the 
Old is no greater than that which separated the writ- 
ers of the old dispensation, with all their absence 
of the full Christian faith, from the ignorance and 
immorality, the idolatry and superstition of the sur- 
rounding peoples, in the midst of which their light 
was as the brightness of the sun. 

And each new bit of knowledge comes only with 
man's striving to reach up to God. The problem of 
suffering and evil, a puzzle to the writer of the Book 



^ See Jefferson; Old Truths and New Facts. 



256 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



of Job^ who rests at length, in the thought of God^s 
greatness and mane's littleness and the impossibility 
of the one being comprehended by the other, is solved 
for ns, as well as it ever will be solved this side of the 
grave, in the life and atoning death of Jesns Christ. 
Or, heredit}' and its blasting course, over which Ezekiel 
agonizes till he seems almost to reject the second 
commandment in his indignant denunciation of a 
wrong interpretation of it, is solved by St. Paul who 
sees the whole truth and knows the remedy for the 
inlierited sin. Or, once more, immortality and the 
resurrection, guessed at by the prophets, held fast 
tremblingly by psalmists, is made certain in Christ. 
So, all through the centuries, men were seeking after 
God, finding Him little by little, adding here and 
there a bit to their knowledge, and at last as they 
look upon Christ knowing Him to perfection. 

It is because the Old Testament has led up so 
gradually and yet so surely to the splendors of 
the Xew, that we postulate God's inspiring guidance 
through the course of the whole work. ^'The fruitful 
soil from which sprang the Christ, the writings which 
on every page witness for truth and righteousness 
with passionate devotion, the institutions which pre- 
pared the way for the Christian Church and which 
are associated with an unique moral and spiritual 
progress of humanity extending continuously over 
some forty centuries, these surely need no other argu- 
ment to shield them from the aspersion of being 
cradled in sheer invention and f raud.'^ ^ 



^Body: The Permanent Value of Genesis. 



THE BIBLE AND ITS INSPIRATION 



257 



There is here a sort of concentration of revelation. 
God reveals Himself in many ways: in nature, for 
the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
ment showeth His handiwork ; in man, made in God^s 
image, after His likeness ; in men especially who have 
sought spiritual truth, for there His Spirit illumines 
and inspires; all this deepened and concentrated in 
the revelation of the Son, who came as the brightness 
of the Father^s glory and the express image, the 
stamped copy, of His Person. Whatever the difficul- 
ties of all that goes before, they resolve themselves, 
when viewed in the light of this splendid outcome of 
it. We have at length in concrete expression the full 
knowledge of the Infinite. What Christ is, God 
is ; what Christ thinks, God thinks ; what Christ says 
or does, God would say and do. He that hath seen 
Him hath seen the Father. 



258 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XXVIII. 
SOME BIBLE PROBLEMS 

HE view of the Bible presented in the last chap- 



Scriptiire and its interpretation. 

Take^ for example^ the matter of the higher 
criticism of the Bible. There is hardly room to go 
much into detail as to what the historical criticism 
is^ how it may be nsed. how it has been abused. 
Suffice it to say that the higher criticism is so called 
in contradistinction to the lower^ or textual^ criticism. 
Textual criticism has to do with the text of the Bible. 
It collects the different manuscripts^ where there are 
various readings seeks to ascertain which is the cor- 
rect one, endeavors to show the relative value of the 
different manuscript readings, examines ancient trans- 
lations of the Bible or quotations in early Christian 
authors, and so gives us the ^^text^^ of the sacred 
Scriptures. 

All this is called the lower criticism because it 
has to do with the bare text of the Bible, the mere 
groundwork, while the higher criticism has to do with 
the spirit of the writing itself and is therefore higher 




some difficulties about Holv 



SOME BIBLE PROBLEMS 



259 



in its order and work. The higher criticism devotes 
its attention to such matters as the integrity and 
authenticity of the sacred writings^ the style of the 
various authors, their methods of work, the sources 
of their information, what human influences were 
exerted upon them, how their work compares with 
that of other writers, what principles dominated them. 

It will be seen at once that this sort of criticism, 
if reverently done, can shed much light on the litera- 
ture of the Bible, just as similar studies have helped 
to a fuller appreciation of the writings of great au- 
thors of secular literature, Shakespeare for example; 
but as there have been Ignatius Connellys in Shake- 
spearean criticism so there are men of like startling 
type in Biblical criticism, whose work is done in a 
spirit of defiant antagonism to traditional views. 
Such men often give us wild theorizing and irrev- 
erent speculation and some of them have carried their 
methods so far as to destroy completely the religious 
value of the Bible. 

The work of hostile critics of this type need not, 
however, blind us to the value of the higher criticism 
in general, nor to the debt we owe to men of a more 
reverent school whose work may prove helpful often, 
even to many who have not yet been able to accept 
their conclusions. At any rate, the question can have 
no terrors for those who hold the larger view of the 
Bible as just presented and read its pages with the 
same idea in their minds that filled the m^inds of its 
writers — read it, that is, to find God and be found of 
Him. Such will see that, whoever wrote its earlier 



260 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



books and however ignorant thev may have been about 
some things that we know, they had gained something 
which we can never find except by their guidance. 

It is when we read the Bible in this way that our 
OT^TL experience convinces us of its divine origin. 
Bead only for critical study, the Bible does not yield 
up its spiritual treasures : but read however critically^ 
if yet read prayerfully and devotionally, with the 
earnest desire to know its inner spirit^ the Bible is 
seen to be a divine library — a volume that answers 
and corresponds to man so precisely, fully, and satis- 
factorily, in so peculiar, so solitary, so unapproach- 
able a way, that its power cannot be accounted for 
except on the theory that God was the supreme agent 
in its production. 

The Bible ^'finds^*^' man — as having intellect, con- 
science, feeling, it •'finds'* him; as ignorant, frail, 
dissatisfied; as sinful or sorrowful; as a seeker after 
truth, it ^'finds*^ him^ and ^'finds'^ him in a wholly 
unique and transcendent way. Other religious works 
possess a similar power, some h}mins for example, 
such as the Te Deum, the Gloria in Excelsis, or one 
of our modern hymns like ^^Sun of my SouF^ and 
^^Eock of Ages*^ ; or some devotions, such as the Litany 
of the Church; or some book like the Imitation of 
Christ. But in two ways all such compositions are 
immensely inferior to the Bible : first, because their 
power is derivative and second-hand, it is not original 
with them, it is but a reflection of the Bible's creative 
power, as the moon is a reflection of the light of the 



SOME BIBLE PROBLEMS 



261 



sun; and secondly, because, however stirring, sub- 
duing, or exalting such works may be, they do not 
^^find^^ us so deeply, exhaustively, or perennially as 
does the Bible. 

Were we to read the Scriptures more we should 
have fewer doubts about their value. The witness of 
our own experience would be an invaluable comfort 
and support in the presence of plausible hostile 
criticism. To one who has proved it for himself no 
criticism can touch the question of the Bible's divin- 
ity. It may change our human theories, but it can 
never change the fact which our theories but seek to 
explain. 

One other fact about the Bible should be noticed 
before we close, its relation to the Church as the ex- 
pounder and interpreter of its message. One funda- 
mental error in the conception of the Bible held by 
many Christian people was pointed out in a previous 
chapter. They imagine that the New Testament is 
given us as a sort of compendium of the principles of 
Christianity and that they have only to turn to it to 
find every doctrine of the faith and every Christian 
practice categorically stated and enjoined. As a mat- 
ter of fact the New Testament was not written to give 
men their first knowledge of Christ and His teaching ; 
it was written for those who had already received in- 
struction in the fundamentals of the faith; and in- 
stead of the direct and categorical statement of the 
main facts of the Christian creeds we rather have in- 
direct allusions to them as to things already well 



262 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



known and generally accepted. Even the gospels do 
not give a first knowledge of our Lord's life. By 
word of month and by the circulation of fragmentary^ 
written records most of the events of Christ's life and 
the principal truths about His person and His teach- 
ing had been learned already^ and the gospels are, as 
with St. Matthew and St. Mark^ memoirs of the 
Master's life; or^ as with St. Luke^ a more carefully 
arranged and detailed statement of the facts^, to teach 
the disciples the certainty of those things wherein 
they had already been instructed; or^ in the case of 
St. John's Gospel^ a supplementary record written to 
show the growth of an apostle's faith in the divinity 
of Christ. 

So with the other books of the N'ew Testament, 
the epistles for example. Those to whom these apos- 
tolic letters are written are evidently men who know 
already the substance of the faith. They have been 
taught orally about the life and doctrine of Jesus, 
about the Church and her sacraments, about their 
o^vn moral duties, about the atonement, the resurrec- 
tion, the ascension, and the life of the world to come. 
The purpose of the Biblical writings is to explain 
things they have forgotten or misunderstood and to 
correct erroneous doctrine and the practices arising 
therefrom. St. Paul, to take an instance, wrote to 
the Thessalonians to clear away current misunder- 
standings about the second coming of our Lord, not 
to give them their first information about that future 
advent ; he w^rote to the Corinthians, not to tell them 
for the first time about the resurrection, but to point 



SOME BIBLE PROBLEMS 



263 



out the errors of those who disbelieved or misinter- 
preted that great fact ; he wrote to the Colossians, not 
to la}^ down the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, 
but to show them that their own knowledge of it 
should have kept them from serious errors into which 
they were falling. 

This is what makes the Bible by itself so difficult 
to understand. If we wish to know its teaching we 
cannot turn to its pages and there find a direct, plain, 
simple statement of fact or doctrine; we must turn 
to the history of the time, study the tradition of the 
Church, and with this as a background all will fall 
naturally into place and be readily susceptible of 
understanding. It would be very difficult, for 
instance, to prove from the Bible the need of infant 
baptism, or the observance of Sunday, or the char- 
acter of the Christian ministry, or a dozen other 
things that might be mentioned. But when we study 
Christian tradition and discover that the early Church 
believed and practised these things, a dozen or more 
Bible references come up at once, proving by their 
indirect allusion the traditional view and themselves 
incapable of satisfactory explanation unless that tra- 
dition be assumed as furnishing the setting of the 
Scripture language. 

By the authority of the Church as the interpreter 
of the Bible we mean, then, that in reading God^s 
Word we must be guided by the Churches tradition, 
her creeds and her conciliar decrees. The Bible is a 
difficult book to study; we need help in reading it 
and the Church gives us that aid. 



264 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Suppose some young students were studying the 
philosophy of Kant or Herbert Spencer. It would 
be of great assistance to them if they had a teacher to 
summarize for them the principles enunciated in the 
various works of these great authors ; it would be of 
greater help if they had an authoritative interpreta- 
tion of certain difficult passages. Xow the Bible is 
deeper^ more jDrofound, than any human writings 
and in the decrees of the Church we have an authori- 
tative interpretation of its contents. In the decisions 
of the undisputed general councils^ we have the opin- 
ions of those who came immediately after the time 
of Christ and His apostles as to what the Bible 
teaching means: not^ it will be observed^ their per- 
sonal opinions of what the truth was^ but their state- 
ment of what the Church had always understood to 
be the meaning of the sacred writers — an opinion 
as valuable as would be^ for example^ a letter from 
an intimate friend of the poet Browning who had 
long known him and from conversations with him 
could tell what this or that passage in one of his 
poems meant. In like manner, Church tradition in- 
terprets Scriptural writings. 

In the creeds of the undivided Church we have 
an authoritative summary of the Bible. We are told : 
This is what the Church has taught. You will find a 
fuller explanation of each article in the Bible, which 
records the original statement of the truth by Christ, 
or the interpretation of it by His followers, who were 
members of the Church, explaining her teaching. 
Start with this teaching, ponder it; then read the 



SOME BIBLE PROBLEMS 



265 



Scriptures and find from careful study of their pages 
that the teaching is true. 

In other words, we believe that the Church gave 
us the Bible — there was a Church organized and 
teaching in the world before the Bible was written — 
and the Church is best able to interpret the Book 
she has given us. 

This is very different from the popular evan- 
gelical statement that ^^the Bible and the Bible only 
is the religion of Protestants.^^ We see what that 
theory results in: Every denomination finding a dif- 
ferent faith and system, as each reads the Scriptures 
from a different point of view ; different people going 
to the Bible to pick out what pleases them or what 
fits in with their theories and forgetting things of a 
different character that affect, qualify, and explain 
what they have accepted. No one is wise enough to 
choose out of the Bible even what is most necessary. 
We shall best read its pages if we take the summary 
of its teaching which the Church gives us in her 
creeds or in the decrees of her councils and then study 
the Bible with these as a kind of syllabus, a sort of 
working hypothesis, which our further reading will 
prove, amplify, and explain. Otherwise we are like 
children at a feast, picking out the sweet things we 
fancy and leaving the rest to our hurt and through 
our own fault. 



266 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XXIX. 

THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE LIFE 

THERE is one great hunger of the human heart, 
one passionate yearning, which it longs to have 
satisfied: to know of a certainty whether there is a 
future life; to look out beyond the present and see 
what lies on the other side of the grave. Death is 
something we must all face; we draw nearer to it 
every day; it is inevitable for each of us. There is 
hardly any of us whom it has not already closely 
touched : some friend or relative it has taken from us, 
some one whom we have loved long since and lost — is 
it only for a while? shall we meet these dear ones 
again ? or have we loved them for a day, to know them 
no more ? There is sorrow in the world, too ; poverty, 
sickness, suffering, injustice, misery of every kind; 
we meet with it ourselves, we see it in others. Is 
there another life, where all this is to be remedied? 
All these questions have been pressed home so sharply 
during the dark days of war. Thousands who had not 
thought much about them before have had to face 
them — fresh thousands every day. 

Yes, this is the souFs deepest yearning — to know 



THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE LIFE 267 



about these things. Our very faith in the existence 
of God hangs on the answer ; for if all that is unsatis- 
factory in life is not to be made perfect hereafter, 
how can we still trust in a God of love ? If we have 
loved and labored for others to no purpose, only to 
have the heart torn and wounded at last by separa- 
tion, what a cheerless, hopeless world this is ! 

Is there, then, another world, is there an endless 
life, or is the grave our only goal? How men have 
wrestled with that problem ! How they have reasoned 
and weighed probabilities and wrung hints from 
nature and forced longings into opinions and tried 
to turn opinions into convictions — and yet they have 
not really known ! 

Outside of Christ, we never can know. One often 
thinks of the testimony of nature : the morning suc- 
ceeds the night; the spring time follows the winter; 
the blade comes up from the buried seed. These illus- 
trate a faith in the future life, but of themselves they 
prove nothing. Nor does our human reason give any 
positive answer. Hopes only are offered, reasonable 
hopes — but we want more than a hope, we want 
certainty. 

That certainty we have in Christ Jesus. ^^Now is 
Christ risen from the dead^^ is the way St. Paul sums 
up the apostolic message. There can be no doubt 
about it. ^^He was seen of Cephas, then of the 
Twelve ; after that. He was seen of above five hundred 
brethren at once; after that. He was seen of James, 
then of all the apostles. And last of all He was seen 
of me also.^^ And so I know, the Apostle seems to 



268 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



say: I do not argue, I state facts. "Xow is Christ 
risen from the dead^ and become the first fmits of 
them that slept.'^ I know that death is not the end 
of all things ; it is the beginning of a new and perfect 
life. I am sure of the existence of the world to come ; 
I know that tliere will be found endless perfection of 
beings that tliere all the sickness and suffering and 
sorrow of this world will be done away. I am certain 
that in the land of light there will be the meeting of 
friends again, the knitting together of the old love. 
I know it, because I know that Christ my Lord rose 
from the dead and because I know that His resurrec- 
tion is not a separate and isolated event, it is the 
pledge of ours. He became man, lived our life, died 
as we die, was buried, rose again in His human nature, 
and in that nature ascended and sitteth on the right 
hand of the Father. Because He lived and died and 
rose as man, all men shall rise as He did. He is the 
first fruits of them that sleep. As the wave offering 
of the first grain of the harvest is the pledge and sign 
of all the crop that is yet to be ingathered, so the 
resurrection of Christ is the assurance that we, too, 
shall rise and live in Him. 

The Christian, then, is absolutely sure of this 
about which other men can at most but be hopeful. 
We do not have to reason out our belief; we believe 
because we have a certain testimony. Those early 
disciples were witnesses who had seen and handled. 
We feel that men who spoke and acted as these did 
could not have been mistaken. We know that such 
wonderful works as they wrought could not have been 



THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE LIFE 269 



done by deluded^ fanatical enthusiasts. We see, after 
all these centuries, that no such mighty influence as 
that of the Christian Church could have had its 
origin, say in the easily exploded dream of an imag- 
inative woman. Its wonderful power is proof of its 
foundation in substantial reality. 

So, then, we do not reason about the life to come ; 
we know. Merely to speculate about a future life 
seems a terrible trifling with human hearts. Those 
who feel their hearts bound up now as much as ever 
with the hearts of those who are entered into rest 
cannot argue about immortality. That is a frightful 
insult to a heart that bleeds at the thought of what 
it has lost. The Church does not argue. To those 
who are hungry to know their dead again, she has no 
controversy, no syllogisms, no hair drawn arguments, 
no fine spun probabilities. She points to Her Lord, 
who rose from the grave, appeared among His dis- 
ciples, tarried with them forty days instructing them 
in the affairs of His Kingdom, and then "while they 
beheld was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of 
their sight.^^ We need to be reasonably assured of 
the fact of Christ^s resurrection and we do believe 
that it is as certainly and undeniably established as 
any event ever recorded in history, but being sure of 
that there are for us no more arguments. When we 
know this, we know all the rest. 

Yet there is one more question: Suppose there is 
a future life : shall we enjoy it, shall we be fitted for 
it? You and I — we are sinful; we know our utter 



270 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



unwortMness : how can we ever enter npon the life 
of eternity in the presence of God? We to whom 
prayer is so hard^ who with difficulty fix the mind 
for a few moments on heavenly things; we who find 
devotion a task, meditation almost an impossibility — 
how shall we be made ready for a life of unending 
worship and adoration? We who have so many fail- 
ings and shortcomings, whose hearts are so easily 
filled with anger or resentment, who are so often 
jealous or envious or discontented, who are so quickly 
offended, so ready to find fault; we who live in the 
world and are too readily satisfied with its lower 
standards, who often tliink more of earthly success 
than of the heavenly riches, who work and plan for 
self, with so little thought of others; we who have 
many of us been guilty of grosser sins that sap the 
spiritual energies and leave the mind a prey to evil 
thoughts — how shall we ever become possessors of 
everlasting life, though we know there is such a life ? 

The answer lies in the remembrance that He who 
rose and ascended was victor not only over death but 
over sin. He for whose glorious resurrection we 
praise God at Eastertide is ^'the very Paschal Lamb 
that was offered for us, and hath taken away the sin 
of the world ; who by His death hath destroyed death, 
and by His rising again hath restored to us everlast- 
ing life.*' He lived our life — lived it in perfect 
obedience — offered the sacrifice that we could not offer 
ourselves and reconciled us to God. He left, too, a 
fountain for sin and for uncleanness. He gave us the 
germ of a higher and better life, which begins to 



THE CERTAINTY OF A FUTURE LIFE 271 



develop in us here and now if we but accept His sacri- 
fice, use His grace, and seek to live in His spirit 
— and the good work which He hath begun in us will 
continue hereafter in never ending advancement until 
at last we wake up after His likeness and are satis- 
fied. He gives us the assurance of heaven hereafter ; 
but He does even more than that, He leads the way 
to it, and pledges us His help on the journey. 

Oh the inspiration of it ! Life has for us a new 
meaning, work has a new incentive, when we know 
that there is something to hope for, something to 
press forward to ; that the prize is surely there to be 
won. To be assured that the struggle will issue in 
triumph — that gives spring and cheer in the midst 
of the contest. Though I fail here, I must keep up 
my courage, some day I shall succeed ; though I falter, 
then I shall be firm; though I fall, I need not lose 
hope, for if I press on I shall at last stand stead- 
fast. I shall have life, but, more than that, in Christ^ s 
triumph over sin and armed in His strength, I shall 
have victory. He whom I try to follow here has won 
for me and even now helps me. There I shall find 
Him at last, and rest in the perfect peace that succeeds 
the strife and battle. 



272 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



XXX. 

THE PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 

IF Jesus Christ rose from the dead^ then we are ab- 
solutely certain of the life of the world to come. 
But did Christ rise? What are the grounds of our 
belief in that stupendous miracle? The subject 
would demand not a single chapter, but an entire 
book, for any satisfactory argument. "We must be 
content with a few homely, common-sense considera- 
tions such as will appeal to the average, every-day, 
practical man — the kind of man who brings to bear 
upon religious problems the hard-headed sense which 
he gives to every-day problems in other fields. 

In seeking for a practical, common-sense proof of 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ, let us first of all 
settle one thing definitely. This Jesus lived and died. 
There icas such a Person, TThatever opinion one 
may hold of the inspiration of Scripture or even 
of the genuineness of the gospels, one cannot think 
that everything told of Christ is pure imagination. 
The story of His life and death is not fictitious in its 
entirety. Such a Person did live and He did die. 



THE PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 273 



Well;, then^ let us start from this point. "He was 
crucified^ dead^ and buried/^ It is very important 
to settle that fact definitely. He died after a public 
execution and was buried in a well-known tomb. 
And then almost immediately His disciples began to 
assert that He had risen from the dead. We need not 
trouble to examine in detail their accounts of the 
resurrection. It is enough for our present purpose to 
state the general fact that the apostles did assert in 
plain and straightforward language that their Master 
had risen; they proclaimed this far and wide and 
declared it with such positive conviction that many 
believed what they said. Christ died and was buried 
and His disciples claimed that He had risen again 
and appeared among them. There is no disputing 
this general statement. 

'Now if the apostles asserted positively that their 
Lord had risen from the grave and if what they said 
was not true, why was it not the simplest matter in 
the world to disprove their statements by producing 
the dead body ? Was it not in the tomb, and if not, 
where was it and how had it disappeared ? 

Those who do not accept the gospel story of the 
resurrection have two theories by which to answer this 
question: (1) the theft theory, and (2) the theory 
of resuscitation after a swoon. According to the first 
the disciples stole the body. This argument has been 
generally abandoned in our day, it is so manifestly 
inconsistent with the character of the apostles. 
Allowing for a moment that they could have stolen 
the body — though the tomb was guarded and they 



274 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



were panic-stricken^ weak^ terrified^ liiiddled together 
in an upper room with the doors locked — allowing 
that thev could, can we possibly suppose that they 
would have done it? Their well-known character^ 
their transparent honesty and sincerity^ is sufficient 
proof to the contrary. AVe cannot for a moment be- 
lieve that the men who first preached the gospel were 
conscious deceivers. One can conceive of their being 
mistaken^ bnt to suppose that they were deliberate 
imposters is inconceivable. And yet the theft theory 
was made necessary by the fact of the death and 
burial and the snbseqnent disappearance of the body. 
This evidently was gone or it would have been pro- 
duced, to the evident confusion of the apostles. 

Then there is the second theory. According to 
this, Christ did not die; He merely swooned from 
exhaustion and when laid in the tomb revived, es- 
caped, and appeared to His disciples. Afterward He 
recovered from His wounds, and His credulous fol- 
lowers mistook His return for a resurrection from 
the dead. 

But there is, first, the well-known fact of the 
death, which in the case of a public execution would 
surely have been carefully ascertained and certified. 
There is, again, the difficulty as to how a weak, faint, 
half-dead man could have escaped from the tomb. 
And there is the further consideration that a very 
brief acquaintance with such a man, slowly recovering 
from weakness and wounds, would have exploded any 
notion the apostles may have had of a triumph over 
death, so that they could hardly have continued to 



THE PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 275 



preach, so confidently what sober second thought must 
have convinced them was untnie. Moreover^ does not 
this theory make Christ Himself a party to a fraud? 
Surely^ even if His return had deceived the apostles^ 
He could not have been deceived^, too^ or could not 
long have continued so. And if not^ could He have 
allowed them to preach a monstrous mistake? Was 
He that manner of man ? Or to look forward a little 
way into the future — ^how long after this did He live ? 
And how during this time was He hidden? And 
when finally His death came^ how were the disciples 
still deceived? And what then became of the body? 
Surely those who ask us to accept this explanation are 
putting too much of a burden on our plain^ every-day 
common sense. 

The two theories which we have just examined 
are direct attempts to explain the disappearance of 
the body of Christ. They do it by trying to impeach 
the honesty and sincerity of Christ or His apostles. 
A third theory^ however^ proceeds on the assumption 
of the absolute integrity of the disciples^ but takes for 
granted that they were credulous and self-deceived. 
This^ which is the popular modern explanation of the 
facts^ we may call the vision theory. It alleges that 
the followers of Christ were susceptible to any strong 
wave of emotion and that in accepting the resurrec- 
tion they were simply victims of an hallucination. 
Mary Magdalene^, according to this theory^ while in 
the garden in an hysterical^ overwrought state of 
mind^ thought she saw a vision of her Master. She 



276 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



communicated her mistaken idea to the apostles^ and 
they readily caught the frenzy and soon fancied that 
they^ too^ saw the risen Christ. Then^ honestly believ- 
ing in what was really but the fruit of their own ex- 
cited imagination^ they announced everywhere that 
their Lord was alive. Fanatical enthusiasm is con- 
tagious^ and it was not long before others caught the 
fever. As the belief grew the details of the vision be- 
came more fixed and definite^ till we have the gospel 
tradition^ with its confusions and contradictions still 
showing the evidence of its origin. 

This is the theory; let us examine it. 

Xow, first of all^ there is the fact that the apostles 
were in a condition absolutely unfavorable to the 
origination of ghostly visions. They were depressed 
and discouraged to the point of despair. ^^Such hal- 
lucinations are possible only when suitable mental 
conditions are present^ the chief of which are ex- 
pectancy^ prepossession^ and fixed idea.'^ These were 
all manifestly wanting with the apostles. 

Again^ consider that this is not a question of one 
or two visions to single witnesses^ but of a cloud of 
visions to large numbers of people. Eemember^ too, 
that these claimed not only to see Christ, but to hear 
Him and touch Him. Moreover, the apostles' con- 
viction of the resurrection was beyond parallel full 
of results, and we have but to reflect a moment to 
appreciate the invariable impotency of ghost stories. 
"At first sight there may be some appearance of plau- 
sibility in the assertion that some crazy fanatic mis- 
took a creation of the imagination for a reality and 



THE PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 277 



persuaded others of its truth. But that considerable 
numbers of persons should imagine that they saw a 
man alive again after he had been publicly crucified 
and mistake this for a reality^ that they should do 
this on several occasions separately and conjointly^ 
and that they should found a great institution on 
its basis, is an assertion which makes our reason 
stagger/^ ^ 

Can we imagine a crowd of men seeing a vision — 
would not some one have broken the illusion? And 
if they spoke to the ghost, can we suppose them hear- 
ing the spectre answer and all in the same words? 
Or, being alike deceived into this belief, thinking too 
that they had felt him by a touch ? Or, admitting all 
these absurdities, that on such evidence they could 
have convinced any rational being of such an extraor- 
dinary statement as that a dead man had come to life 
again — most of all, that they could have won over 
hundreds and thousands to the impossible notion? 
And all this when their opponents had only to open 
the tomb and show the dead body, in order to expose 
the absurdity of the claim ? 

We get back, then, to the fact with which we 
started. Christ really died and His body was pub- 
licly buried. Where was that body? If still in the 
tomb, a glance at it would have pricked like a bubble 
the emotional frenzy of His disciples. If not in the 
tomb but in the possession of His enemies, they 
would have seen to it that the illusion was quickly dis- 



^ Row : Reasons for Believing in Christianity, 



278 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



pelled in the same practical fashion. If in the cus- 
tody of His friends^ how did it get there^ and could 
the disillusionizing process have been much longer 
delayed? Xo^, the body had disappeared^ and the 
cause of its disappearance was that Christ had really 
risen from the dead. 

There is^ then^ the strongest possible proof of the 
resurrection^ apart from the details of the gospel 
narratives. AVe protest^ however^ against discounting 
these records. If they be rejected because of appar- 
ent inconsistencies^ we reply that in any event of to- 
day half a dozen people might give as many different 
accounts seemingly contradictory yet perfectly ca- 
pable of being reconciled and harmonized by one who 
was thoroughly acquainted vrith. the facts. Or for 
any who doubt the genuineness and authenticity of 
the gospels^ we may point to the witness of St. Paul. 
There are four of Ms epistles which even by skeptics 
are universally admitted to be genuine^ and were there 
no other writings these four books show conclusively 
that the apostles believed in the resurrection of their 
Lord with all their heart and soul. 

But, as hinted above, most powerful of all the 
arguments for the resurrection are the marvellous 
results that have sprung from it. How shall we ex- 
plain the wonderful transformation of character in 
the apostles, or the influence of the doctrine on other 
lives, or such a miracle as the conversion of St. Paul? 
Eesults, again, in the Christian institutions that have 
survived through 1900 years: What shall we say of 



THE PROOF OF THE RESURRECTION 279 



the celebration of Sunday during all these centuries ? 
The day is a weekly memorial of the resurrection, 
and as such has supplanted the old Sabbath. Did 
the change originate in an absurd error? And what 
contributed to the perpetuation of the mistake? 
What, again, shall be said of baptism, with the con- 
stant teaching that we are buried into Christ's death, 
to be raised into newness of life in Him? What of 
the Holy Communion — could it have continued as the 
memorial of a dead friend, if that Friend had not 
also proved Himself the Lord of life ? 

And what of the Church? Its existence is the 
strongest possible proof of the resurrection of the 
Lord Jesus. Consider ^^the utter impossibility of a 
belief in the resurrection having arisen, spread widely, 
been accepted without doubt, and becoming the 
foundation of the Christian Church on any other 
hypothesis than the reality of the fact.'' ^ How, but 
on the truth of the Lord's triumph over the grave, 
shall we account for the Church? how explain its 
rapid growth out of a state of depressing bewilder- 
ment and despair? or its very organization, in con- 
fidence and enthusiastic assurance after the darkness 
of doubt and disbelief? What shall we say of its 
existence through the ages, if it be not a testimony 
to the truth of this on which all its work and all its 
teaching rested? Can all the Christian life of the 
past nineteen centuries have been based on a delusion 
and a dream? 



2 Reasons for Believing in Christicmity . 



280 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



How long does it take to prick such bubbles of 
belief in these days ? And allowing for all differences 
between this age and a simpler age of faith, how long 
would it have taken to prick such a bubble after 
Christ^s death? How can we possibly explain the 
establishment of Christianity on anything other than 
a foundation of absolute certainty? In considering 
the miracle of the resurrection, let us not forget the 
subsequent miracle of the Church and its ordinances 
of grace. Could they have been based on a delusion ? 

Surely not. We believe in the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ because nothing less than this great 
miracle can account for all the miraculous results 
that have followed in its train. 



THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 281 



XXXI. 

THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 

THEEE is hardly any subject of religious thought 
that holds so keen an interest for us as that of 
the condition of the departed. The agony of the 
world sorrow has made it a bigger problem to-day 
than ever before. Millions of homes are homes of 
sorrow. Week after week^ for many long years, the 
old questions have been asked with poignancy of 
multiplied grief. Thousands have sought for the 
answers to them. They have gone to mediums and 
spiritualists of every school for comfort and sure 
confidence. A great scientist has written a pathetic 
book to tell of his own search for certainty."^ 

After death — what? We must all face death 
ourselves sometime and we know not how soon. 
For all of us there is the thought of others who 
have gone before. Those friends and dear ones whom 
we have ^^loved long since and lost awhile^^ — where 
are they now ? We have some definite idea of the life of 
the world to come, after the great judgment day, when 



^ Sir Oliver Lodge : Raymond. 



282 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



the faithful have entered upon their eternal bliss ; 
but in the meanwhile^ before the time comes when we 
and they shall meet face to face^ when if we have 
been faithful we shall be summoned into the presence 
of the Master — in the meanwhile^ what of those who 
wait for us on the other side ? Where are they ? what 
is their spiritual condition ? They are asleep, we are 
told: is it a sleep of torpor? or are they conscious? 
are they active ? are they interested in us ? able to do 
anything for us ? Can we do anything for them ? Do 
they suffer? or are they at peace? How strange it 
is that men have sought the answers to such questions 
everywhere save in the one Book in which they might 
best expect to find them ! 

We are the more eager to know the answer to these 
questions if we have any true conception of what 
death is. So often we soothe our souls with the 
thought that somehow death changes at once the char- 
acter of those we know, that they are quite different 
now from what they were on earth. Yet we are all 
imperfect, all to some degree sinful, and death can- 
not act like a general absolution, making us ready at 
once for our new life. No, whatever more we may 
learn about death, it is, first of all, simply the passage 
from this world, with all that is so natural and famil- 
iar, to another world, unfamiliar, strange and unac- 
customed, with sights and sounds new, and it cannot 
but be mysterious and awe-inspiring. Our bodies we 
must leave behind us and therefore the soul must 
enter this new abode stripped of all that comes 
through the perception of the senses. What must 



THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 283 



the soul feel, then, if it is still conscious, at being 
ushered at once upon a world of which we know so 
little? 

There is a story in one of Canon Liddon^s won- 
derful sermons that shows the great and solemn 
reality of this change." An Indian officer, who in 
his time had seen a great deal of service and had 
taken part in more than one of those decisive strug- 
gles by which the British authority was finally estab- 
lished in the East Indies, had returned to end his 
days in England and was talking with his friends 
about the most striking experiences of his profes- 
sional career. They led him, by their sympathy and 
by their questions, to travel in memory through a long 
series of years. As he described skirmishes, battles, 
sieges, personal encounters, hair-breadth escapes, the 
outbreak of the mutiny and its suppression, reverses, 
victories — all the swift alternations of anxiety and 
hope which a man must know who is entrusted with 
command and is before the enemy — their interest in 
his story, as was natural, became keener and more 
exacting. At last he paused with the observation, 
"I expect to see something much more remarkable 
than anything I have been describing.^^ As he was 
some seventy years of age and was understood to have 
retired from active service, his listeners failed to catch 
his meaning. There was a pause ; and then he said, in 
an undertone, ^^I mean the first five minutes after 
death.^^ 



^ Advent in St. PauVs, Vol. II. 



284 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



The phrase showed indeed an appreciation of the 
intense and awful reality of the new life and it will 
explain why questions about the present state of the 
departed have so pressing an interest. We and all 
these others are to stand some day at God^s judg- 
ment throne and we hope and pray that the voice 
will sound for us^ ^^Come^ ye blessed of My Father/^ 
So we hope — ^but even so, the question remains, what 
of their state in the meanwhile, these who have gone 
before? They are our dearest and our best and we 
long to know how they live now in this strange coun- 
try over whose borders they have just stepped. What 
does the Bible tell us of the present state of the 
departed ? 

First, we are told that they are at rest. They are 
released from the body with its distresses and sick- 
nesses and so they are freed from the pain and dis- 
tractions that darkened their last hours here. Later, 
they will be ^'^clothed upon^^ with a new body; but 
now they are free spirits and they are at rest, because 
the sick and tortured frame is put aside till the day 
when soul and body, both cleansed and sanctified, are 
raised into newness of life. "They rest from their 
labors,^^ too. The toils and the hardships of life no 
longer oppress them, for earth^s conflicts have ceased. 
And they are free, too, from anxiety and care; they 
have none of the trials and difficulties of this worldly 
life. There "God shall wipe away all tears^^ ; "sorrow 
and sighing'^, for them, are no more. Most of all, 
they are at rest because they are free from tempta- 



THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 285 



tion; their probation is over and the subtle attacks 
of evil can no longer distress them and keep them 
back from God. 

Already^ then, the faithful departed are at rest. 
We shall see, later, that they have not yet entered 
upon the bliss of heaven in the vision of the Blessed 
Trinity, but for all that they have entered upon a 
spiritual repose. "Blessed are the dead who die in 
the Lord: Even so saith the Spirit; for they rest 
from their labors.^^ 

(2) But this rest is not an unconscious sleep. 
"Certainly the paradise which our Lord promised to 
the dying thief cannot be reasonably imagined to 
be a moral and mental slumber, a condition no higher 
than that which is produced by chloroform.^^ So, 
again, the parable of Dives and Lazarus shows us 
men in the waiting time after death, fully conscious, 
quickened in thought and feeling rather than dead- 
ened and stupefied. Such hints of the other life 
as we have in the appearance of Moses and Elijah 
at the Transfiguration, or in the cries of the souls 
under the altar, show us that the blessed dead are far 
from resting in unconscious torpor. 

(3) IsTot only is the present life of the departed 
a conscious existence, it is also a life of intense 
activity. Here we have the experience of our Lord 
Christ Himself as an example of what awaits others 
in their present abiding place. This experience is 
a typical one. Our Lord was true man; He died as 
man ; death meant for Him, as for us, the separation 
of soul and body; what happened to Him is, we 



286 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



may suppose, recorded to show us what will happen 
to others. His body was buried, as ours will be ; but 
while ^"^He was put to death in the fiesh/^ He was 
^^quickened in the spirit, in which also He went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison/^ Afterward soul 
and body were reunited at His resurrection. The 
time between our Lord^s death and His resurrection, 
then, was a time of spiritual activity. The rest of 
death — rest from the toils, trials, and sorrows of 
earth — was not incompatible with occupation that 
absorbed the life of the spirit. 

And so, we may imagine, it will be for us. Those 
who rest from their labors here will not rest in the 
sense that they have nothing to do. For aught we 
know, they also will be ^^quickened in the spirif^; 
their life will be a life of intense activity. 

On what work, then, are they engaged? First 
their activity will result from their increasing absorp- 
tion in a growing knowledge of spiritual things. 
Before they can enter upon the vision of God they 
will have much to learn of Him and this waiting 
time will be filled out in the acquiring of a deep and 
thorough knowledge of the All-Holy One. Freed 
from the labors of this temporal existence, their ener- 
gies will be spent in securing such an acquaintance 
of God as was impossible for them in this life. The 
difference between their knowledge of God after death 
and the knowledge they had before will correspond to 
the increase of knowledge that would come to us were 
we able to see one of our earthly acquaintances in 
spirit. We know them now, but we read the life of 



THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 287 



the soul only through its bodily manifestation. Sup- 
pose we could see a soul unclothed — read its thought, 
know its motives^ have its inmost emotions unveiled — 
the increase of real knowledge would give some notion 
of the new knowledge of God that will be ours when 
we are ushered upon the life of the spirit. 

Again^ the activity of the soul after death will 
result from the work that it must do for self. As 
they learn more and more of God, so will the departed 
be learning more and more about themselves. All 
their lives will pass before them like a panorama, so 
that they will see the past as a whole, and as in a 
mirror. This knowledge will bring about a desire 
for improvement and growth — and we may be sure, 
therefore, that the souls of the departed will be 
actively engaged in their own purification and sanc- 
tification, in preparing themselves for the nearer 
presence of God that will some day be theirs. 

Possibly, too, their spirits will be laboring actively 
for others. Who knows what share they may have, 
some of them, in helping companions in the middle 
state towards a deeper and richer life? A young 
priest, of pure and unselfish spirit, is suddenly taken 
from earth, when he has hardly yet entered fully upon 
his service for souls. Who knows but in the other 
world he may be permitted to join in the labor 
which His Lord began, may have been taken that 
he, too, should ^^go and preach unto the spirits in 
prison^^? Or who, again, can tell how much the 
prayers of the faithful may work for us who are still 
in our pilgrimage? "Quickened in the spirit,'^ may 



288 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



not their petitions rise more freely to the throne of 
grace, and may not a devoted wife or mother or hus- 
band or father do more in this new sphere than could 
have been accomplished in life here? 

(-i) That will answer for us the next question^ 
^^Are they still interested and concerned about us?^' 
How can they be otherwise, if they are conscious? 
Surely ^^death does not break up the communit}^ of 
interests that are eternal.** The living and the dead 
have many things in common: we who are still alive 
and they who have gone before are members of the 
same great family and the same love stirs in us as 
moved us before our separation in the body. If we 
are interested in them, they must still be interested 
in us^ still praying for us, still succoring us in ways 
that are past finding out. We are not told how much 
they know of the events of our life, how much they 
can see of oar daily walk, but they must be able to 
do something for us still — for, whether they know 
much or little, they are not far away, but very close 
to us. ^'They have but passed from one room into 
another in the same building of the Lord: one and 
the same roof is still over us and them : they are in a 
better, brighter quarter of the same great Home and 
House of Christ, and whatever they are doing, what- 
ever they are beholding, whatever they are enjoying, 
they can never forget us, nor cease to count the hours 
of time till we be with them.** ' 

Because they do so labor and pray for us, it has 



^Morgan Dix: The Communioyt of Saints. 



THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 289 



been felt that we may ask the best of them to pray 
for us the more. Some theologians hold that the 
greatest of God^s holy ones^ the Blessed Virgin, the 
apostles and martyrs, the patriarchs and prophets, 
may already have passed to the Beatific Vision, bnt 
whether this be true or not their prayers can avail 
much for us. Why should we not call upon them to 
remember us then, it may be asked. We have no cer- 
tain knowledge that they hear, it is true, but there 
may be means of spiritual communication of which we 
do not dream. At any rate there have always been 
some who have found great help and comfort in 
thus ^"^invoking'^ the prayers of the saints. Our own 
Church has been careful to omit the practice in public 
worship, because of the practical dangers it was found 
to involve ; but in private we may use this help, if we 
find it profitable in the spiritual life, provided we 
remember always that we ^^invoke^^ the prayers of the 
saints who are gone before, just as we would ^^ask'^ 
for the prayers of a good man or woman on earth. 
Since, however, we are uncertain that they hear, it 
is best to address our requests to God only and to 
ask Him that His saints may pray for us and that 
their petitions may be of avail for our help. 

(5) And then, since most of the departed, at 
least, are still waiting for their future blessedness, 
we can do something for them as well as they for us. 
If they are not yet made perfect and if their pres- 
ent life is a condition of growth and continued prog- 
ress in the knowledge of self and of God, we may 
strengthen our communion with them by praying for 



290 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



their increasing advancement in the divine favor 
and their deepening appreciation of the divine love. 
They do not need our prayers in the same way as do 
others who are still in their eartlily probation; nor do 
we know their needs as we know those of our earthly 
companions; yet we may freely ask for them what- 
ever may be necessary for their progress, feeling even 
that they may in a measure depend on our petitions 
just as those in this world need oiu^ prayers and 
labors. TTe pour out our hearts in prayer for the 
dead, then, and thus realize our unbroken fellowsliip 
with them. Protestantism makes a yawning gulf 
between the living and the dead. We must bridge 
the gulf. Many, indeed, have been learning to bridge 
it by their prayers during the recent years. They 
have refused to believe that the souls of their 
friends have passed beyond the need of their care 
and sympathy. 

For thousands of years such prayers have been 
used by Christians, and they are found in everj^ 
liturgy of the ancient Church. Hundreds of years 
before Christ they were in use among the Israelites. 
As they formed a part, of the worship of the sma- 
gogue, our Lord Himself and His apostles must 
have used them; at any rate He speaks no word in 
condemnation of the custom. In the last few years 
the sorrow of the world has brought thousands back 
to the practice of the Church in that ^'age of faith*'. 

It is safe, surely, for us to follow that practice 
and to make more real our remembrance of the 
departed by praying for them. With St. Paul^ 



THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED 291 



we may ask for them "mercy in that day^^ With the 
ancient Church we may ask that they be granted 
eternal rest and that light perpetual may shine upon 
them. Our connection with them has not ceased 
and until we and they alike have our perfect consum- 
mation and bliss^ both in body and soul^ they may 
need our prayers as we need theirs^ though ours for 
them must necessarily be less definite and particular, 
because we know so little of their special needs. Thus 
in memorials of those who have lived and died in the 
Lord, in loving prayers for their happy progress, 
we shall remain in closer communion with them until 
we who are now in the burden and heat of the day 
join them in the rest of paradise. In that hour of 
death, and in the day of judgment, by Thy cross and 
passion, Good Lord, deliver us ! 



292 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Engiisli chaplain tells of a young soldier who 



i \ addressed him publicly in this fashion: "Sir^ 

somebody has been saying back home that a man who 

dies for his country goes straight to heaven whatever 

his life may have been beforehand. Do you think 

it is true? If a chap gives his life in this way^ will 

he be all right on the other side^ even if he hasn^t 

been quite straight here^ or will he have to go to 

hell ^ What struck the chaplain was not merely the 

naive simplicity of the question but a certain wistful- 

ness behind it. He told the questioner that we might 

trust God about it. 

Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde : 
Hae mercy on my soul, Lord God; 
As I would do, were I Lord God, 
And ye were Martin Elginbrodde. 

That is the way an old epitaph^ in the north of 
Scotland puts it. The chaplain also urged that 
usually the issue was not quite so sharp as the ques- 
tion had made it. Few of us are fit for highest 

^ Campbell : The War a/nd the Soul. 



XXXII. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 




THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 293 



heaven and few of us are bad enough for the deepest 
hell. 

In the Churches doctrine of the Intermediate State 
we have the real answer to difficulties like this — diffi- 
culties which some voice only hesitatingly, which 
others put forth rather brazenly and flippantly which 
all of us feel more or less keenly. In the last chapter 
it was taken for granted that men do not go at once 
after death to their final abiding place, but that there 
is this intermediate state where even the most faithful 
of the departed must wait until they are made ready 
for fulness of life in God^s presence. 

It has been supposed, possibly, by some who do not 
accept this teaching, that since it postpones the day 
of complete blessedness for the departed it must de- 
tract in some measure from our Christian consolation 
in the hour of death. If we examine the subject 
more closely, however, we shall see that the Church 
view, far from taking away our confidence and cer- 
tain hope when we are called upon to part with loved 
ones, is really in numberless cases full of the greatest 
possible comfort. As a matter of fact, must not 
those who think that after death the righteous soul 
goes at once to heaven be staggered at tracing this 
idea to its logical negative and contemplating the fate 
of those who cannot without great straining of 
language be numbered among the faithful ? 

For, after all, what sort of people are the great 
majority of those at whose graves we say the final 
prayers of committal? How few of them, even on 
the most charitable view of the case, can be thought 



294 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



of as in any degree fit for heaven ! Weak, wavering, 

sinful souls many of them Avere. having some good 
qualities, it is true, but very imperfect and very un- 
worthy to enter into the presence of their Creator. 
Such goodness as they have is rather in germ, often 
wholly undeveloped and incomplete. They are not 
among those who have wilfully and absolutely rejected 
God (though perhaps some of them have come peril- 
ously near it) and so we trust they are not among 
the finally impenitent or lost, but if the choice must 
be made then and there in their present state, apart 
from the hope of future development and progress in 
holiness, who could say that there was much hope of 
heaven for them ? 

And then that multitude of souls who have never 
had our Lord and His redemptive work properly 
presented to them, the heathen, the dwellers in the 
slums of a great city, the ignorant and uninstructed 
ever^'where — what about them? If there is no 
chance that somewhere they may be subjected to a 
purifying process and developed in the life of grace, 
we can have little hope. But if it is believed that 
there is such a place and such a hope, then perhaps 
God will accept them, since they have never delib- 
erately and absolutely rejected Hun, because He 
finds in them at least the beginnings of goodness, seed 
that is undeveloped but may grow in another field 
under the watchful care of His saints and angels. If 
they must enter at once into life or else be reserved 
for death, could our hope be as strong or our hearts 
as free to trust that all will be well ? 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 295 



This it is that sometimes leads those who have 
been brought up under the ordinary Protestant in- 
fluence to revolt from what they erroneously believe 
to be the orthodox doctrine of the judgment. Seeing 
how few there are for whom we may have any reason- 
able hope of an immediate entrance into heaven and 
yet shrinking from the consignment of such imperfect 
souls to Satan^ they have been led to provide a merci- 
ful solution of the problem by denying altogether 
everlasting punishment or resting in the hope that for 
such as these there is another probation after death. 
In the next chapter we shall consider eternal loss and 
shall see how little logic there is in wholly reject- 
ing it if we yet hold to a belief in the divine 
knowledge of our Lord Christy who apparently asserts 
its awful reality. As for the other solution — a proba- 
tion after death — the doctrine of the Intermediate 
State solves the difficulty without resorting to any 
such uncertain theory. 

The Bible^ as interpreted by the Churchy would 
seem to show that probation ends with death. We 
are constantly taught that this period of our earthly 
life is our time of trial and testing and that there is 
no other. Indeed^ to suppose that men in some 
future state might change from a life predominantly 
evil to one that is good would imply that others might 
be in danger of changing from good to evil — and 
death would have greater terrors for us than now. 
Quite different is a belief in the Intermediate State^ 
yet quite as comforting for those who fear for them- 
selves or their friends. It teaches that God in His 



296 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



goodness accepts the soul at death not for what it 
actually has become but for what it will become, not 
because it is developed in goodness but because the 
seeds of goodness are there and are not so choked by 
the evil as to be incapable of growth. As we stand 
at the grave of some weak brother whose life wavered 
so uncertainly between right and wrong, we may have 
fresh hope; we may believe that when he departed 
this life he was (taking things at large and on the 
whole) upon the right side. There was more of good 
than evil in him, his tendency was upward rather 
than downward, and though he was very imperfect 
God mercifully took him as he was, to develop the 
good in him till he should be prepared for the eternal 
life. This does not mean that he is to have a second 
probation, but that, taking it all in all, he stood his 
probation here and that now in a place of preparation 
the evil is gradually to be purged away so that he 
may be made fit for heaven. So, those who have 
never heard the gospel or to whom it has never been 
preached aright or whose environment has made it 
impossible that they should have ears to hear it — such 
are judged according to the light they had, and they 
too need no new probation, only the carrying on and 
developing of what such probation as they had has 
made them here. 

Indeed, of heaven itself we are not told that it 
will be one dead level of happiness — there may be 
degrees of blessedness. In the Father's house are 
many mansions and some of these may be the final 
abode of the most saintly, some the abode of those 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 297 



who never attained such heights of holiness. Allow- 
ing for all that and believing that in the Intermediate 
State each sonl is preparing for its own place in the 
heavenly mansions^ we may have hope for many of 
whom we should otherwise despair. 

It may be urged that such arguments lead to an 
easy-going attitude towards sin and encourage men 
in carelessness and indifference of livings but the ex- 
perience of those who have put much stress on it in 
their teaching is the very opposite. Eather, it gives 
men hope and arouses a greater perseverance in some 
who might otherwise rebel or despair. Instead of 
despondently giving up the struggle they take fresh 
courage ; they know they are not saints, but they have 
in this teaching a new incentive to make the best they 
can of the remaining years of life, even though 
obliged to battle continually against old habits and 
besetting sins. 

Perhaps it would have been well, before saying all 
this, if we had stated as briefly as possible our grounds 
for believing in the Intermediate State. The argu- 
ments in reason have already been shown by implica- 
tion, viz, : that even those who die in grace, however 
holy their lives may have been, are by no means pre- 
pared to enter at once upon the joys of the heavenly 
life and rest in the perpetual contemplation of the 
Ever-blessed Triune God. They need to be purged 
most thoroughly from the sins that defiled their souls 
during life, they need much progress in holiness, 
before they can enter the divine presence. 



298 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



As to the evidence of Scripture (for of course we 
know nothing about it except what revelation teaches 
and reason accepts) St. Paul has several passages 
which imply the thought. We need not dwell upon 
these for it is enough that our own hearts tell us that 
before we enter into glory we must^ of necessity^ dwell 
for a time in some place of purification waiting till 
our souls have been made fit for the Master. 

There are several Scripture passages^ however^ 
which we can hardly pass over. For example: On 
the cross^ a moment before his death;, the penitent 
thief pleaded for mercy^, and our Lord answered him^ 
"To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.^^ Did 
He mean that the thief was to go at once to heaven? 
In the first place^ our Lord Himself did not ascend 
thither until more than forty days later ; in the second 
place^ that one act of penitence^ though it brought the 
sinner pardon^ did not prepare him to enter im- 
mediately the inner presence chamber of God^s house. 
"To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise^^ evidently 
therefore refers to his presence with Christ in some 
intermediate abode of the blessed dead. 

So of our Lord Himself an experience is related 
that bears on the question. Being perfect man^ 
Christ went through all that happens to men at their 
death. His body was buried; His human soul went 
to some waiting place of the departed; on Easter 
morning His soul and body were reunited^ and He 
arose and appeared among men, bringing them a 
pledge and token that their souls and bodies would be 
reunited and that they would rise too. St. Peter tells 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 299 



us that^ put to death in the fleshy He revived in 
spirit^ i.e., in the soul as contrasted with the body, 
and in the spirit He went to the place of departed 
spirits, the souls in safe custody, and to them pro- 
claimed the glad tidings of redemption. Even after 
He had risen from the grave He did not go at once 
to heaven, but said of Himself, ^^I am not yet 
ascended unto My Father/^ 

What our Lord tells us, moreover, in the parable 
of the rich man and Lazarus shows us that the right- 
eous immediately after death go not to heaven, but to 
some temporary resting place. Lazarus reposes in 
^^Abraham^s bosom'^ until the general day of judg- 
ment — which has not yet come, since the rich man 
speaks of his brethren as still in their earthly 
probation. 

The thought of the Intermediate State (or par- 
adise or purgatory, if one prefers to call it either) 
will show us why the Church has always believed in 
the efficacy of prayers for the dead. The life after 
death is a time of further discipline and progress, 
where those who are saved are subjected to some puri- 
fying process to prepare them for heaven. For this, 
then, our prayers may help them. Any petitions we 
make could not aid them were they lost ; such prayers 
they no longer need as a stay against temptation ; but 
they may need them (and we have every reason to 
believe will be helped by them) in the way of advanc- 
ing their spiritual growth and development. It is 
for such purposes that our prayers are offered for 



300 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



those who are gone before — that they may have lights 
peace^ rest^ refreshment^, growth in the divine favor, 
increasing knowledge of the divine love. ''Grant 
them^ Lord^ eternal rest, and let light perpetual 
shine upon them.*' Because in measure all men die 
with something yet to be done for their souls^ with 
some light still needed, with something of spiritual 
progress necessary, therefore for all men prayers after 
death, somewhat vague and indefinite as they must 
be. will yet accomplish good and will bring aid and 
succor there, as they give it here. He who began a 
good work in us not only carries it on during this 
earthly life but will continue it until the great day. 
•^'the day of Jesus Christ.'* It cannot be unavailing 
to offer our prayers in aid of this good work and to 
omit to do so would be ^'to imply that all connection 
between the departed and ourselves had ceased, than 
which nothing could be more untrue.** 



HEAVEN AND HELL 



301 



XXXIII. 

HEAVEN AND HELL 

T TEUST it will not be thought flippant if I start 
1 this chapter by reminding my readers that a good 
many of us, for more than four years past;, have been 
puzzling ourselves over the question as to what would 
be a just and righteous thing to do to the group of 
men who were responsible for the unspeakable out- 
rages against humanity which marked the Prussian 
conduct of the war. Just what would be a fitting 
place in which to put them or a fitting sentence to 
inflict upon them? What ought to become of those 
who deliberately planned the devastation of Poland 
and Armenia, the ruin of Serbia, the outrage against 
Belgium, the barbarism in northern Prance? What 
punishment would be considered adequate for those 
who were morally responsible for the sinking of the 
Lusitania, the murder of Edith Cavell, the crucifixion 
of captured soldiers, the enslavement of industrial 
workers, the ravishing of women, the mutilation of 
children, the deliberate destruction of property apart 
from war necessities, the ruin of churches, the defile- 



302 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



ment of altars and the host of other horrors that 
marked the war? 

At this time it may be best that these things shall 
be forgotten rather than avenged^ but who can forget 
them^ who in this generation ever will forget them? 
Certainly it does not become ns to single out individ- 
uals (for we cannot tell degrees of responsibility and 
guilt) and consign them to punishment. That is not 
what I mean. I am only trying to say that for four 
years^ whether we ought to have done it or not, we 
have been asking questions like this and we have 
answered them in the most astonishing possible way, 
considering that we are a people who had come to 
believe in a loose, lax, kindly, benevolent deity whose 
sense of righteous wrath was wholly lost in His undis- 
criminating affection. 

Well, then. All this is introductory to the 
thought that there are people in the world — never 
mind who or how many — ^but there are some of whom 
we can have little hope that they will ever be fit for 
heaven. It is somewhat surprising to find those who 
have steadily refused to face difficult facts now sud- 
denly become most violent, pronouncing emphatic 
judgment where it is best to speak, if we must speak, 
only with hesitancy and reserve. The fact is, the war 
atrocities have opened our eyes to the awfulness of 
unrepented sin and forced us to consider what may 
be the final issue of such impenitent guilt. We 
cannot decide in any individual case, and so long as 
life remains we continue always to hope ; but there are 



HEAVEN AND HELL 



303 



some^ apparently, in whom all good is extinguished. 
We can hardly escape, then, the thought of hell as a 
place of punishment for the wicked. 

If it be asked how we reconcile the existence of 
such a place or state of everlasting punishment with 
belief in the goodness of God, we answer that there 
are many things which we cannot expect to under- 
stand fully here and that this is one of them. We 
need not be ashamed to say of this as of other things, 
"I do not know.^^ 

One thing, however, we should remember: that 
what we are told of everlasting punishment comes 
from the lips of our Lord Christ Himself. It is not 
in the Old Testament only, with its stern views of 
God's justice, that we find the doctrine, it is in His 
teaching also. He to whom we owe all we know of 
a future life. He who showed such tender pity toward 
the weakness of men, taught with the utmost solem- 
nity that a terrible doom was impending on sinners. 
Because they were lost He came to save them, and if 
in spite of all that He did there were yet some who 
were hardened against the divine grace until good be- 
came evil to them and evil good. He said that they 
might be found guilty of a sin such as "shall not be 
forgiven either in this world or in the world to come.'' 
If it was possible for such words to fall from the lips 
of Him who is Love Incarnate, it behooves us to 
approach the subject with humble mind. It is a part 
of the mystery of evil, an outgrowth of the gift of 
free will, and our finite minds are incapable of under- 
standing fully what stretches back to the creation and 



304 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



on through eternity. If^ however^ the doctrine was 
not an impossible one to Jesus Christy with all His 
love^ His mercy^ His purity of soul^ it need not be 
rejected by us^ as incompatible with divine love. We 
should remember that our minds are clouded with sin, 
our hearts sullied by repeated acts of rebellion against 
God. We are hardly capable of deciding for ourselves 
moral issues on which the All-Holy One has pro- 
nounced decision. If He could say, in words so 
solemn in their awful self-restraint, ^^It had been 
good for that man if he had not been born," we must 
believe that in some way a fate so pronounced is quite 
consistent with perfect love and justice. 

We must bear in mind, too, that God cannot be 
charged with the fate of the finally impenitent. He 
^Vill have all men to be saved, and to come unto the 
knowledge of the truth." If there are some who do 
perish it will not be for any lack of effort on His part 
to prevent the calamity. All that divine love can do 
to hold back the sinner from his fate, will be done, 
we may be sure. jSTone will be lost whom God could 
save without destroying His own gift of free will. In 
other words, the punishment of the lost will be in- 
herent rather than retributive. In the case of a child 
who obstinately and persistently continues in dis- 
obedience a certain alienation results which of itself 
is a punishment. The parent still loves the child and 
still yearns for his return, but the child, by his own 
wilfulness, cuts himself off from the blessing that 
might be his and inflicts upon himself his own punish- 
ment. He is wilfully in a state of separation, and his 



HEAVEN AND HELL 



305 



self-inflicted punishment must last so long as this 
alienation endures. 

Nor are we to confuse the doctrine of eternal 
punishment with theories of men as to who will un- 
dergo this awful fate or the number of the lost or 
the character of their punishment. Of all this we 
know but little. We are not intended to know more 
or it would have been revealed to us. The late Dr. 
Paget reminds us that whoever may be in the abode 
of the lost will contain and maintain its dreadful 
secret within himself and no one will he in hell who 
would not bring hell tvith him wherever he went. As 
just said, the punishment will be inherent and self- 
inflicted. Dr. Paget gives an illustration^ to show 
something of what hell is. Think, he says, of a man 
with a downright bad, ill-conditioned heart, coming 
home one evening from a place where he has been 
engaged in some vile, mean, degrading sin — coming 
home with his mind full of horrid lust and suUenness. 
His wife is waiting for him. She has tried to make 
the room look as bright as she can. Two of his chil- 
dren are staying up to kiss him and say good-night to 
him before they go to bed. As soon as he opens the 
door he sees all the love that is waiting, bright and 
true and tender, to bid hun welcome, but it only 
hardens his cruel heart. He hates it all for being so 
unlike himself; hates it for leaving him nothing to 
grumble at; hates it because he has no love in him 
with which to meet it. He scowls at the children and 



^ Oxford House Papers^ first series, chapter viii. 



306 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



curses his wife and then sits down by the fire to spend 
his time in sulky silence and vile thoughts and stupid^ 
senseless rage. Who is to blame for it? Anyhow, 
not the wife, jSTow^ just imagine a heart settled down 
utterly and deliberately into such a temper; a heart 
that has finally stamped out of itself all lingering 
traits or movements of tenderness; a heart in which 
there remains no faculty^ no power of really loving 
anything at all. What can such a heart do^ but only 
go on and on in the black despair and misery of per- 
petual hatred? And how can such misery ever have 
an end ? And what is this but hell ? And who is to 
blame for it? Anyhow, not Almighty God, 

In other words^ what God judges and condemns 
is character. J^o man is rejected because he did this 
or that. His condemnation is based on the fact that 
he has become what he is; and he is not finally lost 
until he has so degenerated that he can never become 
anything else. 

In this we see something of what the final judg- 
ment will be. There is a particular judgment at the 
hour of death for each individual when his or her fate 
is determined^ but in the final judgment this sentence 
will be published and made known to all men and so 
plainly set forth that all will see how inevitable was 
the decree. The last great judgment will be the rev- 
elation of all of God^s purposes from the beginning. 
We shall see that God^s hand has been over all things ; 
we shall know why He permitted evil to exist; we 
shall understand why He judges^ and how; we shall 
realize His absolute goodness and justice. If some 



HEAVEN AND HELL 



307 



are lost^ it will be made plain that lives such as theirs 
could have had no other issue. If endless punish- 
ment^ rather than annihilation, be their fate, it will be 
apparent that characters are judged, not deeds, that it 
is not what we have done but what we are that makes 
judgment necessary — and what we are we shall al- 
ways be. The condemnation of the wicked may mean 
simply that they are left to themselves to remain as 
they are forever. "He that is unjust, let him be un- 
just still, and he that is filthy let him be filthy still, 
and he that is righteous let him be righteous still, and 
he that is holy, let him he holy still.^^ 

I have written thus far as my own reason inter- 
prets revelation and as I believe the mind of the 
Church in the past has interpreted it. I am free to 
confess that my heart rebels against some of the 
things my head accepts. I have no quarrel with 
others who read things differently; I wish I could 
read them otherwise myself. 

Yet I do not believe that the teaching of Scripture 
about the punishment of the impenitent is the real 
difficulty. It is not so much what is to be done with 
evil that troubles me. It is rather the fact that evil 
was ever permitted to be. That problem has been dis- 
cussed in a previous chapter and if I made myself 
clear there it was evident that I felt we must be con- 
tent to leave the problem as an unsolved mystery. So 
it is with the question of the end of the wicked. I 
am leaving it unsolved. For myself I am content to 
confess ignorance; I am willing not to know. With 



308 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



those whose course of reasoning is other than my own^, 
I do not dispute. As to all that I conscientiously 
believe the thought of the Church has permitted I 
may best quote one of her greatest scholars and 
theologians : ^ 

^"^The universalism Avhich is so popular to-day — 
the belief that every created spirit must ultimately be 
recovered to fulfil the end of its being in God — though 
it is supported by some early Christian authorities 
and though it has never been formally condemned by 
the Church with any ecumenical judgment^ is flatly 
contrary^ plainly contrary^ to the language used by 
our Lord about the destinies of men and generally to 
the language of the New Testament. I do not think^ 
however^ that by excluding universalism we are ab- 
solutely shut up into the almost intolerable belief in 
unending conscious torment for the lost. The lan- 
guage of the Bible does not necessarily suggest this. 
I do not think that it supplies us wdth any ground for 
the dogma that the consciousness of a man once 
created is indestructible. Final moral ruin may in- 
volve, I cannot but think, such a dissolution of per- 
sonality as carries with it the cessation of personal 
consciousness. In this way the final ruin of irre- 
trievably lost spirits, awful as it is to contemplate, 
may be found consistent with St. Paul's anticipation 
of a universe in which ultimately God is to be all in 
all — which does not seem to be really compatible with 
the existence of a region of everlastingly tormented 



2 Gore: The Religion of the Church, p. 83. 



HEAVEN AND HELL 



309 



and rebellious spirits — while at the same time the 
awful warnings of our Lord and His apostles as to the 
inevitable consequences of wilful final sin supply, to 
every one who chooses to think at all^, a most powerful 
motive to prefer any effort to the risk of losing his 
own souF/^ 

It will be well to let this subject rest in the mys- 
tery in which it is left by God and to consider rather 
the comforting doctrine of the certainty of heaven, at 
last, for all who are saved. We have not space to deal 
with the subject at length but only to suggest a few 
thoughts on different aspects of it. 

(1) The first is that so far as we know there may 
be degrees of blessedness in heaven, according as we 
dwell in one or another of the "many mansions'^ in 
the spiritual realm. We shall all be rewarded with 
the beatific vision of the Blessed Trinity, but there 
may well be differing degrees of spiritual insight and 
while the reward will be the same for each of us who 
is saved the capacity for receiving it may differ 
according as we have attained in our life on earth. 
The heavenly life need not be all on one level. 

(2) As there are differing degrees of blessedness, 
so there may be different duties and different sta- 
tions, involving of course no separation between souls 
who have known each other here, but allowing man- 
ifold opportunities for varied service. One will be 
over five cities, another over ten, and some will be set 
on thrones judging, or governing, the twelve tribes of 
the new Israel. The life of heaven will be a life of 



310 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



activity^ not of idleness : who could possibly conceive 
of indolence as synonjonons with happiness ? 

(3) Another thought is^ that the chief character- 
istic of the heavenly life will be the absolute con- 
formity of our wills to the will of God. The office 
of His creatures there will be to do His service^ and 
since this can be happiness to them only in so far as 
His work is a delight^ they must have their desires 
wholly centered in Him^ or heaven would not be 
heaven at all. 

This will explain^ perhaps^ why some could not be 
happy^ even if in spite of their sin they were per- 
mitted to enter heaven. How could a man who never 
gave one thought to the service of God here^ to whom 
the offices of prayer were a tedious task^ who did not 
acknowledge His sovereignty or give a single thought 
to His existence, whose life was selfish and utterly 
unloving — how could such a man live in heaven, even 
if he were permitted to enter there, where the praise 
and worship and service of the x^Llmighty must occupy 
every thought of the heart through all eternity ? 

The heavenly life will be an absolute conformity 
to the will of God : how much that will explain, too, 
about life here ! In what should our Christian effort 
consist? Not wholly in the avoidance of sin, nor 
chiefly in seeking some better motive than our own 
interest, but rather in trying to act simply, solely, 
exclusively from a desire to be obedient to the known 
appointment of God. 

Moreover, there is suffering here, sorrow, afflic- 
tion. May it not be that God sometimes makes use 



HEAVEN AND HELL 



311 



of these to help us to subordinate our wills to His^ 
teaching us to say from the hearty ^"^Thy will be 
done^^ ? When things are hard and life is full of bit- 
terness^ we are to work on^ feeling that God may be 
giving us this trial to test us^ that if we succeed it 
will be a stepping stone to higher sonship hereafter, 
knowing that the angels, the saints, our own departed 
perhaps, God Himself, are looking on us and rejoicing 
that we are running our course well, that we are 
gradually becoming so conformed to what God would 
have us be that our wills are growing into unity with 
His. 

(4) This will bring up again the question of the 
lost. It is sometimes asked how we can ever be happy, 
even in heaven, if we know that any one soul has per- 
ished and more particularly if any one whom we our- 
selves have known and loved is shut out from the 
beatific vision. May we not find the answer in the 
fact that although God loves all souls His love can 
find no place of lodgment in such as are given over en- 
tirely to evil and that if our will is in perfect har- 
mony with His the same will be true of us? For 
what is it, after all, that arouses lasting affection ? Is 
it not something of good in the soul ? If there is no 
trace of this nor yet hope of it for true love to rest 
upon, must not love be baffled? If all likeness to 
God is gone, all touch of His goodness lost, will there 
be anything on which a right affection can expend 
itself? This, at least, may be a hint to the explana- 
tion of what cannot possibly be made absolutely plain. 
At any rate, then we shall see in some measure as 



312 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



God sees, we shall know all that is to be known ; and, 
because at last we understand, no disturbing element 
will mar our perfect happiness. 

Then we shall understand, but as yet we know 
but little. We do know, however, all that we need 
for life in the present. Here, as we live day by day 
deeds are forming habits and habits are forming 
character and when character becomes fixed our fate 
is determined for all eternity, i^o smallest action of 
our daily life, therefore — no word, no thought even — 
is insignificant. Each goes to make us what we shall 
be, for weal or woe, forever. And without Thee, 
God, we are unable to please Thee. Let Thy Holy 
Spirit direct and rule our hearts. Let Thy continual 
pity cleanse and defend us. Without Thee nothing is 
strong, nothing is holy. Increase and multiply upon 
us Thy mercy, that Thou being our ruler and guide 
we may so pass through things temporal, that we 
finally lose not the things eternal. Grant this, 
Heavenly Father, for J esus Christ^s sake, our Lord. 



THE ANGELIC WORLD 



313 



XXXIV. 
THE ANGELIC WORLD 

IN the first year of the Great War a story ran like 
wildfire over England, telling of a host of angelic 
beings who were seen at Mons and had stayed the 
oncoming rush of the German invaders. The story 
was disproved. Investigation showed that it had its 
origin in the poetic imagination of a newspaper man. 
He had seen the Germans stopped, when to stop them 
seemed unbelievable and impossible. That they were 
halted by that thin, worn line of British soldiers was 
nothing less than a miracle. It meant that God was 
on the side of the defenders of liberty and righteous- 
ness. ISTothing less than His presence could have 
saved them against such terrible odds. The writer 
threw this into poetic form and the result was the 
story of the angels at Mons. 

Disproved or not, however, the tale of the angelic 
helpers would not down. There are those to-day who 
still believe it, despite the clear evidence of the source 
of the story. And why should it be thought impos- 
sible? We know that we are no longer to expect 
external evidence of the presence of spiritual powers 



314 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



back of the visible universe — that day of vision has 
probably passed — just as we no longer have the visible 
presence of Jesus Christ on earth, but have something 
better to take the place of what at most vroiild have 
been local and limited. There is evidence enough 
of the presence and power of God in His world. 
Whether we see them or not. then, why should it be 
thought impossible that He works through spiritual 
agents ? 

Xature itself is so wonderful and we have learned 
so much in recent years of the principles that produce 
phenomena so long seen and so little understood, 
why should we ever halt at mystery? To be told, 
for example, that the air which surrounds us is per- 
vaded by a subtle ether and that this is in continual 
vibration from waves of light and sound, crossing and 
recrossing each other at innumerable points till the 
whole is like a quivering mass of jelly : to be told that 
this ••'ethereal gelatine"" is as solid as adamant ; to be 
informed that it permeates the most solid substances 
and that thr^ough some of these waves of electricity 
may penetrate where waves of light cannot — these are 
things which, to be sure, are capable of a certain kind 
of proof, but which most of us have not proved though 
we accept them as part of our every-day belief. 

Indeed, the whole world is full of mystery. ''Go 
into the fields,"' says Canon ]^IacColl, ' •'on a still, 
sultry day in summer, when there is not a breath of 
wind to stir the air about you. All nature seems 



Christia/iity in Relation to Science and Morals. 



THE ANGELIC WORLD 



315 



asleep; the cattle lie slnmbering in the shade; the 
birds are silent in the groves; not a leaf flutters in 
the woods ; not a blade of grass waves in the meadow ; 
there is apparently an entire absence of life and 
movement. But if you had eyes that could penetrate 
through leaf and stem^ through blade of grass and 
soil and rock^ and if you had ears that could catch 
the secret harmonies of nature^ you would be amazed 
at the multitude of sights and sounds that would be 
suddenly revealed to you. You would find that there 
was no stillness at all in the landscape that erstwhile 
appeared to be so fast asleep. There is movement 
everywhere. The tree^ whose leaves droop motionless 
in the noonday heat and whose trunk stands erect 
against the sky, is throbbing with currents of life 
rushing through every pore. A stream of sap is 
coursing between bark and tissue and millions of 
vesicles empty themselves every moment through all 
its leaves. There is not a blade of grass in the field 
that is not palpitating with the life that is inces- 
santly circulating through it.^^ It is Canon I^ewbolt, 
I think, who says that if we had ears to hear we 
should turn mad at ^^the unceasing roar which goes 
on always just the other side of silence.^^ 

Why is it, then, that we hesitate and draw back 
when we hear something no whit more remarkable 
about the spiritual realm? The Bible tells us that 
just as this natural world is so mysterious a thing in 
its quivering activity so there is also around and 
above us another mysterious life, a great spirit world, 
a heavenly host of the messengers of God, ever doing 



316 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



Him service and ever at His command succoring and 
defending ns in the manifold perplexities of our daily 
work and duty. Surely, if one can accept the revela- 
tions of science vrith so calm and composed a belief 
we need not smile in compassionate incredulity when 
another revelation steps in with its wonderful story 
and asks us at least to listen before we turn away to 
scoff. Let us briefly summarize, then, what the Bible 
tells us of this angelic world. 

First, we are told that it exists. There can be 
no doubt at all of that in the mind of one who believes 
in the inspiration of Scripture. The Bible is full of 
accounts of angelic beings. They appear to the patri- 
archs of the early Jewish dispensation; they are seen 
in visions by prophets ; one of them brings the news 
of our Lord^s advent to Zacharias and the Virgin 
Mother; they herald our Lord^s birth; they succor 
Him in His temptation and in His agony; they roll 
away the great stone from His grave and afterward 
guard the empty tomb ; they proclaim His resurrection 
and hover about Him at His ascension; they aid His 
imprisoned disciples; they people His courts in the 
heavenly places shown to the seer on Patmos. Yes, 
the angels exist. 

Next, we are told something of their mode of 
existence. It is like what our own resurrection life 
is to be, when we shall be as the angels in heaven who 
neither marry nor are given in marriage. The words 
imply that the angels did not come into existence 
after the same manner of propagation as do men; 



THE ANGELIC WORLD 317 

they are the immediate creation of God, as their 
name (sons of God) would indicate. Godet has 
pointed out that we might expect this from what we 
know of life here on earth. For, first we have vege- 
table life — species without individuality ; then animal 
life — in which individuality exists, but is over-shad- 
owed by species; then man himself — ^where we find 
species and individuality again, but now with indi- 
viduality as the predominant fact. Why not, there- 
fore, the last measure of the equation, angelic life, in 
which there is individuality without species? In 
other words, with the angels there is no unity of 
substance by which all would have kinship one with 
another, but each individual stands by himself, with 
no such common ties as bind the human race together 
in a union so strong that we are linked with all our 
fellows by virtue of that nature which we all inherit 
from our first forefather. God created individuals 
from whom the race has descended in an unbroken 
line of natural birth, but He did not so create the 
angels; each was made directly by the Creator's 
hand. 

The angels, then, exist; and their mode of exist- 
ence is peculiar in that they are the immediate cre- 
ation of God, each taking life from Him and not 
existing by any secondary and mediate act of propa- 
gation. We have yet to inquire what relations, if any, 
they bear to nature and to man. And, first, to nature. 



^ Old Testament Studies. 



318 THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



It has been supposed from certain passages of 
Scripture that the angels were not only the first 
created beings but that they form a kind of ''spiritnal 
snbstratnni*^ in which (to pnt it rather crudely and 
after a homely figure of speech) material things were 
afterward plant-ed. In the Book of Job we read that 
at the creation of the world the morninof stars saner- 
together and all the sons of God — ^the angels — shouted 
for joy: from which it is inferred that before the 
earth came into existence the angels were present 
waiting for this new manifestation of God's love. It 
is impossible to settle any theory very definitely from 
language that is highly poetical, but other hints in 
the Bible certainly lead us to the same conclusion and 
there seems also a special significance in our Lord's 
words, recorded by St. John, ^^Hereafter ye shall see 
heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and 
descending upon the Son of Man/' — ascending and 
then descending : as if their home were here on earth, 
and they left it only that having departed for a time, 
they might return with gifts for us. They were here 
before we were, here before the world itself was cre- 
ated, here as the idea of tilings, the counterparts or 
doubles in the spiritual world of the material things 
in the natural world; an unseen universe back of this 
visible one, giving this its beauty and at the same 
time having some control over its powers. Four 
angels hold the four winds, in the revelation of St. 
John ; another angel has power over the fire ; every- 
where we have a picture of these angelic guardians, 
presiding over nature's forces, giving her that charm 



THE ANGELIC WORLD 



319 



which attracts us more and more the deeper our 
spiritual life becomes and standing in such close 
connection with her that the sacred writers call upon 
sun and moon, fire and hail, snow and vapor, through 
their angelic counterparts, to praise and magnify the 
Lord. 

Surely there is something inspiring in such a 
view of nature. "What,^^ asks Cardinal Newman, * 
^Vould be the thoughts of a man who, when examin- 
ing a flower, or an herb, or a pebble, or a ray of light, 
which he treats as something so beneath him in the 
scale of existence, suddenly discovered that he was in 
the presence of some powerful being who was hidden 
behind the visible things he was inspecting — who, 
though concealing his wise hand, was giving them 
their beauty and grace and perfection, as being God^s 
instrument for that purpose, nay whose robe and 
ornaments those objects were^^ — for ^^every breath of 
air and ray of light, every beautiful prospect, is, as 
it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of 
the robes of those whose faces see God.^^ 

We see, then, the relation the angels bear to nature 
— ^how they lie back of the visible world, giving it of 
their radiance and loveliness. Let us look next at 
what Scripture tells us of their relations to men. Of 
the reality of this relationship we are assured by our 
Lord^s own words, when He tells us not to despise the 
weak and the little ones, because in heaven their 



" Apologia Pro Vita Sua. 



320 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



angels do always behold the face of the Father as 
they stand in His immediate presence. 

So we learn that angels, sent to succor and defend 
US on earth, give ns their protection ("He shall give 
His angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all 
thy ways^^) ; they nourish men and minister to their 
wants, as they did to Elijah when he lay under the 
juniper tree and to our Lord in His temptation and 
in the agony of Gethsemane ; they bring messages to 
us, as Gabriel did at the Annunciation or as did the 
company who appeared to the shepherds the first 
Christmas night ; they assist in our worship : St. Paul, 
writing to the Corinthians about reverence in the serv- 
ices of the Church, tells them that the angels are 
always near them, pleased at what is devout and 
fitting, grieved at all irreverence and carelessness. 

Whether or not each soul has its particular guard- 
ian angel, it is clear that these spiritual beings take a 
deep interest in the affairs of men, watching over 
Christ's little ones and rejoicing over His penitents. 
God's kingdom embraces angels as well as men, and 
though we are not united to them by the ties of 
nature, the Father has seen good to knit us to them 
by their offices of love in a bond that will be even 
closer hereafter than it is now. Nations also seem 
to have their angelic guardians and advocates, such 
as the "Prince of Persia'^ and the "'Prince of 
Grecia^', and perhaps Churches also have their 
"angels'^, though the meaning of the term in connec- 
tion with the seven Churches of Asia is not altogether 
clear. It may be that their various duties, too, account 



THE ANGELIC WORLD 



321 



for gradations of rank among them — angels, arch- 
angels, etc. — though possibly St. Peter and St. Paul, 
in enumerating these ranks, may be simply adopting 
the language of the heretical teachers whose doctrine 
they are opposing. 

Finally, as there are good angels who guard and 
protect us, so there are evil ones, fallen spirits who 
are working against men — spirits who still retain 
much of their old power and are therefore terrible 
foes in the war they wage with us. ^We wrestle not 
against flesh and blood,^^ says St. Paul, ^iDut against 
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of 
the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
ness in high places.^^ At the head of this host of 
fallen spirits is Satan, an archangel who fell through 
pride, carried away others with him and has now 
become the incarnation of evil. It has been supposed 
by some that the title given him by our Lord, ^^the 
Prince of this World,^^ shows that the earth was orig- 
inally intended to be Satan^s own kingdom and that 
he has therefore a special hatred against men as the 
possessors of his former power. That he did have 
some such dominion seems to be implied in his words 
to our Lord, ^^AU this power will I give Thee, and the 
glory of them, for that is delivered to me, and to 
whomsoever I will I give it.^^ 

At the head of the company of the blessed spirits, 
however, is St. Michael, the vanquisher of Satan and 
leader of the hosts of heaven. His name (Michael 
means "Who is like unto God?^^) shows the immeasur- 
able distance that separates even the highest of ere- 



322 



THE FAITH BY WHICH WE LIVE 



ated beings from the Creator Himself. Michael is 
the Tvarrior of God, while Gabriel God's hero'') is 
His messenger, the heavenly evangelist. Both alike 
minister to men, though in different vrays. 

Tried and tempted as ve are here, we have there- 
fore in the thought of this angelic creation a constant 
reminder that we are not struggling alone. If it is 
hard, sometimes, to realize God's help and presence, 
Tve shall find a stimulus to faith in the recollection 
of these princes and champions of the heavenly 
realm who hover around ns, ever ready to do 
God's bidding on our behalf; for so our spiritual 
senses will be quickened, and from the thought 
of these His servants we shall the sooner rise to the 
thought of God, who is our ever-present Helper and 
Defender. We shall the more readily, too, rejoice in 
the ofreat love of God in sendinsr these radiant ones to 
minister to our comfort — a love so unselfish that He 
is willing to share with others of His creatures our 
grateful response to it by making them the bearers of 
His grace and therefore our benefactors. As in 
thankful love we praise the Giver of all this goodness, 
we shall look forward with deeper faith and fuller 
joy to the day when the bliss now given to these holy 
spirits shall be ours as well, when we, too, shall stand 
in God's presence and with angels and archangels 
and all the company of heaven shall laud and magnify 
His glorious name, joining in the seraphic hymn and 
ever more praising Him and saying, '^Holy, Holy, 
Holy, Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full 
of Thy glory : Glory be to Thee, Lord Most High.'' 



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